Enhance Your Airline On-Time Performance KPI — 4 Essential Design Tips

Nonetheless, what I observe is that —most often— the on-time performance is presented as one bold number only. This isn’t wrong. However, I’m firmly convinced that many airlines don’t realize the full potential of this KPI. That’s why we put together four essential tips. Each of the tips will help you to make more out of your airline’s on-time performance KPI.

Tip #1 — Apply Dimensions To Your On-Time Performance KPI

Global on-time performance is essential for every airline. However, when it comes to day-to-day operations and a perfect situational awareness, it is necessary to apply dimensions to the on-time performance KPI.

Think about showing airline on-time performance for your different sub fleets. How is your Boeing fleet performing in relation to your Airbus fleet? Or even more specific compare your 747 to your A380.

The same applies to your airports. How does your on-time performance differ between your important hubs or outstations?

The third idea is to cluster the on-time performance according to the different traffic regions of your airline. Are your flights to Asia performing better than your flights to North America? I’m pretty sure you get the point. There are lots of possibilities in applying dimensions to the global on-time performance KPI.

Tip #2 — Use Hit Lists

Based on the above idea, you can take this even one step further and provide on-time performance hit lists. What are your top 5 airports when it comes to on-time performance? Or move away from airports and take complete flight/routes into consideration. Which routes are performing best in terms of on-time performance for your airline?

And of course, this also works again for other dimensions like sub fleets or aircraft.

Tip #3 — Reverse On-Time Performance

A simple trick to focus on an important aspect: Instead of showing the on-time performance, show the percentage of unpunctual flights. This, primarily, works very well for thresholds, which are very important to comply with. For example, many of our clients have a close eye on their 180-minute punctuality.

And instead of showing the percentage of flights that are below 180 (this would typically be around 99%), they show the opposite. The rate of flights with a delay >180. Since everybody knows that this KPI has to be 0%, already a value of for example 1.5% or 2.1% looks very alarming.

Tip #4 — Enrich The On-Time Performance Of Your Airline

I’ve already written a whole article about enriching KPIs in general. This, of course, applies to on-time performance too. Think about adding target values, an average, or historical data to provide context to your users. Adding that information massively boosts the quality of your on-time performance for your airline.

What Do You Think?

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