When Airline Employee Communication Fails
Understanding how airline employees share information during the airplane turnaround process
Generative User Research | 8 Weeks | Oct - Dec 2021
Background
The process of offloading an incoming plane and preparing it for departure, also known as “The Turn,” is a strategically important activity for every airline’s financial success. The faster an aircraft can be offloaded, prepped, and boarded, the more flights per day the airline can get out of a single plane. Conversely, any delays in The Turn can cause significant downstream effects impacting future flights across multiple airports.
In 2021, one of the world’s largest airlines was continuing a multi-year effort to improve its airplane turnaround time at one of its flagship airports. Although they had made significant procedural improvements, communication breakdowns between frontline employees were continuing to cause departure delays.
As part of this broader effort, Smashing Ideas was approached by the company’s IT leadership team to understand why these communication breakdowns were happening and to identify opportunities to improve employee communication during The Turn. Over the course of eight weeks, I led a four-person research team on an in-person contextual inquiry study at the company’s flagship airport to observe firsthand what pain points were inhibiting successful employee communication.
Client
Fortune 500 US airline
My Role
Project Lead & Sr. User Researcher
Teammates
Ilona Chebotareva, Liza Sankar-Gorton, Diamond Kenney, Hannah Rudin
My Contribution
Research planning, contextual inquiry, user interviews, stakeholder interviews, stakeholder management, analysis & synthesis, project management
Research Objectives
Understand the key procedural, technical, and interpersonal pain points that inhibit successful information sharing between five key employee groups during the airplane turnaround process.
Identify opportunities to improve information sharing and communication between these five key employee groups.
Uncover the unmet needs of frontline employee groups and convey them to business stakeholders.
User Profiles
Our client had identified five key employee groups who were crucial to The Turn’s success but whose lack of cross-team communication was slowing down the airplane turnaround process. These groups were:
Turn Coordinators
Responsible for coordinating between frontline teams, removing blockers, and documenting departure delays
Gate Agents
Responsible for managing customer needs at the gate, checking passengers onto the plane, and handling gate-checked baggage
Crew Chiefs
Responsible for leading ramp teams through the baggage loading process on the tarmac
Flight Attendants
Responsible for preparing the plane for takeoff and managing passenger boarding on the aircraft
Customer Service Leads
Responsible for supporting frontline teams and acting as an escalation point for issues
My Approach
Although originally scoped as a 13-week project, due to end-of-year budget constraints and a fast-approaching holiday peak, we only had eight weeks to plan, conduct, and synthesize an in-person study at a major US airport when COVID-19 restrictions were still hampering the travel industry.
As the project lead, I spent the week before kickoff collaborating with the client to understand their business goals, refine our research objectives, and re-scope the project based on timeline feasibility. After multiple iterations, we settled on a three-phase approach with two weeks dedicated to discovery and planning, one week dedicated to onsite contextual inquiry, and five weeks dedicated to analysis and synthesis.
Discovery & Planning
During an intensive two-week sprint, our team conducted discovery sessions with the client to understand their airplane turnaround process, the five key employee groups we were studying, and the technology being used to facilitate information sharing.
To accomplish this, I led stakeholder interviews, facilitated product demos, and reviewed client documentation. Additionally, I asked one of my supporting researchers to lead an ecosystem mapping workshop to understand key employee relationships during The Turn.
While my colleagues and I were conducting these discovery sessions, I was working simultaneously to incorporate our findings into a contextual inquiry research plan that built upon our emerging knowledge of the problem space.
Contextual Inquiry
To understand the nuances of employee communication within this highly orchestrated process, it was crucial that we observe these interactions in-person and speak to employees on the frontlines. As a result, I planned a contextual inquiry study to observe how teams communicate at the client’s flagship airport in Dallas Fort-Worth.
Over the course of one week, we studied each employee group by shadowing them during The Turn, observing them using the company’s digital products, interviewing them to better understand their pain points, and documenting how information flowed between teams.
Our time on the ground saw us traversing the entire airport, sitting with turn coordinators in the control center, boarding planes with flight attendants, and shadowing baggage teams on the runway. This exciting and chaotic week gave us unrestricted visibility into the work of each employee group that very few people, including our stakeholders, had received.
Analysis & Synthesis
We came away from our field research with over 40 hours of audio recordings, handwritten observation notes, and photos to analyze. Over the coming weeks, we analyzed our raw data through qualitative coding, used collaborative debriefs to surface findings from individual team members’ analysis, and conducted internal synthesis workshops to identify insights across the entire communication ecosystem. Our findings were consolidated into an in-depth research deck for the client.
Outcomes
Through our research, we were able to uncover a system of relational challenges, organizational inefficiencies, and technical redundancies contributing to a culture where employee groups felt like they were competing with, instead of collaborating with, each other. To capture the nuances of these complex communication challenges, we delivered to our client:
Process maps and qualitative insights documenting key moments where communication breakdowns led to departure delays and systemic issues.
Personas documenting the goals, information needs, and communication barriers for each of the five employee groups during The Turn.
Technology pain points inhibiting information sharing between employees.
By taking action on these findings, our client has the opportunity to streamline the user experience of its turn technology, improve communication between these core employee groups, and decrease flight delays at one of its key airports as a result.
Our IT client stakeholders are now socializing our research findings across their product teams to incorporate the opportunities we uncovered into their broader turn revitalization effort.
Reflections
Dealing with ambiguity
This project was easily the most ambiguous I have worked on during my career. Over the course of our engagement, our timeline, client needs, research location, and feasible methods changed multiple times.
As a result, I had to be comfortable with quickly adapting our research plan and methods to respond to the project’s ambiguities.
Timeline constraints and tradeoffs
Although originally scoped for 13 weeks, our timeframe was cut to 8 weeks just three days before kickoff.
As a result, I had to make multiple tradeoffs to maintain our project timeline while ensuring we still conducted a rigorous research process that uncovered valuable insights.
Working closely with the clients to understand their goals and communicate these tradeoffs was crucial for driving alignment and project success.
Team leadership
As a first-time project lead, managing our internal team while also navigating the ambiguities of the project proved to be the most challenging part of this engagement.
Although I was successful in guiding the team through project planning and execution, there were times where I struggled to incorporate and address conflicting opinions and collaborate to resolve them.