Air New Zealand getting more punctual, using AI to communicate delays

Air New Zealand is getting more punctual, having improved on-time performance by 8 percent compared to June last year.

While 86 percent of flights had touched down within 15 minutes of schedule - 1719 were late last month, around 57 per day.

The airline's chief operations officer Kate Boyer told Checkpoint that it would like that number to be closer to 90.

Boyer said there were three things that had contributed to Air New Zealand's improvement: schedule, digital tools and procedures, and culture.

"Going on-time is the most important thing for our customers," she said. "It is the most critical moment of customer trust."

Boyer added that it had been a focus across the whole organisation.

"Our teams are so passionate about our customers. They care deeply, and going on time is sort of success for us. That's what they all work for all day, day in and day out. But what we've been doing is asking for their ideas. What can we do differently? What can we change to make it easier to get those planes out on time? So, really engaging them in the problem solving."

Boyer said Air New Zealand was on-time for 89 percent of domestic flights, but only 78.8 percent of international.

"Aviation is a tough game."

The airline had invested in building trust when a flight had to be delayed or cancelled, such as an automated rebooking system, Boyer added.

"Aviation is such a high-stakes choice for people to travel - they've got a meeting, they've got a wedding, they've got a funeral, they have a reason that they're travelling - and we take that really, really seriously."

AI

Boyer said that Air New Zealand was using AI (artificial intelligence) in "a number of really interesting ways".

The first was to figure out how to make the network more resilient, including assigning the right aeroplane to the right flight.

The airline also used AI to predict whether a flight would be delayed, Boyer said.

"If we see something coming in late, and we know we're going to have to do a crew swap or an aircraft change, if we can know how long that's likely to delay the flight, we can give our customers much better information, much more granular information."

Boyer hoped that would build trust by being more transparent and providing a more detailed explanation about why a flight had to be delayed or cancelled.