ACL announces that Edmond Rose has decided to leave to pursue other opportunities. Edmond will remain in the CEO role while ACL’s Board appoints a replacement and will continue to lead the company for the coming months.
ACL’s chair, Lesley Cowley, commented: “I’m sorry that Edmond has taken the decision to move on from ACL. Since taking over as chair of the company earlier this year, I have enjoyed working with Edmond and supporting him and his team through the difficult and disruptive period caused by the pandemic. Throughout this time, I am pleased that ACL has maintained its delivery of excellent coordination and high levels of customer service under Edmond’s able leadership. He continues to have my full support while I and the Board begin the process to find and appoint his successor.”
As Covid-19 continues to impact the aviation sector, there remains a great deal of uncertainty surrounding waivers from the utilisation target. This may lead to unintended consequences if returning slots without first considering if a waiver is in place. The following provides details of the current situation at ACL airports as at 26 August 2020.
Historic Baseline Date (HBD)
The HBD remains 31 August 2020 and ACL will create the results table which determines the utilisation target for each slot during NW20 on or shortly after that date.
Waivers as at 26 August 2020
Waivers are currently in place for ACL airports in New Zealand and Dubai covering the entire NW20 season. Alleviation will be granted subject to certain conditions which are detailed here. This document will be amended as information changes.
A waiver is not currently in place for any of ACL EU & UK airports so cancellations made will be treated as per the EU Slot Regulation as would be the case in any other season. Carriers are encouraged to consider the below information when determining when to make cancellations at these airports.
Cancellation before the HBD
Carriers wishing to benefit from the 20% cancellation allowed before the HBD should continue to make these changes as normal. The cancellations will be included in the calculation of the utilisation targets. Details of how ACL determine historics can be found at the following links:
Cancellations more than the permitted 20% may result in the returned slots being made available to other carriers which may impact on your ability to retain the historic. For examples full season cancellations made at this time will be returned to the slot pool and reallocated.
Cancellation after the HBD
Airports with a waiver (New Zealand & Dubai)
At airports where a waiver is in place, alleviation will be granted to cancellations made after HBD subject to any conditions in place. Cancellations meeting the conditions will be counted as operated against the utilisation target.
Airports without a waiver (ACL EU & UK Airports)
Any cancellation made after the HBD but prior to a waiver being issued may not count towards the utilisation target and may impact on your ability to retain the historic slot. For example, a full season slot returned after the HBD but before any alleviation has been granted will be returned to the slot pool and reallocated.
Carriers will need to make their own assessment on the timing and likelihood of a waiver and determine their hand back strategy accordingly.
If alleviation is granted, cancellations made after the waiver announcement will be treated as operated subject to any conditions in place.
Newly Allocated Slots
ACL issues all newly allocated slots on a non-historic basis. ACL will consider newly allocated slots should they operate in line with 8.7.1(d) of the WASG. ACL has prepared Guidance on how newly allocated slots will be treated which can be found here.
Carriers not intending to operate newly allocated slots are requested to return these as soon as possible.
ACL’s airport analyst, Chris Butler, revisits the numbers, revealing what the latest flight volume numbers say and what this means for the remaining summer season.
Over the past weeks we have seen initial signs of optimism for flying in Summer 2020. Changing government policies, as well as signs of increasing consumer demand, have enabled greater flexibility and allowed the aviation industry to focus on a ‘ramp-up’ in flying for the remainder of the S20 season. The first week of July saw over 1,000 slots held per day across UK Level 3 airports, representing over 20% of the volume seen in Summer 2019 and increasing to over 30% by the end of July.
This tentative return of flying follows a trend of widespread cancellations as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak with 600,000 slots cancelled at UK Level 3 airports since March, representing 65% of the total allocated slots for S20.
The volume of cancellations, however, is decreasing. June saw 12% fewer cancellations than seen in May, as airlines begin to align their schedules to the expected summer demand. We can also analyse the number of ‘slot changes’ made by airlines (route, time and equipment changes to existing slots held in the schedule) to understand how this preparation for a ramp-up in flying has increased. June saw an increase in slot changes of over 250% compared to May, suggesting that airlines have significantly increased their activity in preparation for restarting some limited flying in S20.
June has also seen a 187% increase versus May in the number of ad-hoc slots added to the S20 schedule at UK Level 3 airports, translating to over 22,000 new slots. Schedule data can be used to identify where airlines are seeking to ramp up operations; 42% of slot changes made last week were for slots held in August, which may indicate that airlines are planning for a substantial increase in flying volume next month relative to current levels.
Analysis of ACL schedule data suggests that demand will not return uniformly; peaks in flying volumes may present further challenges to the industry as flights restart. Volumes in July are significantly higher on Day 5 (Friday), as airlines plan to meet demand for leisure flying.
Whilst the overall average number of flights per day in July equates to just 25% of last summer’s volume, the current schedule indicates that July will see an average of over 1,800 flights per day on Day 5, representing 34% of the volume seen in S19.
Summary
Our data indicates that the S20 schedule will remain extremely dynamic as airlines prepare to increase flying across the coming months. By analysing the volume of changes made to existing schedules we can forecast changes in flying at specific airports, times, and dates. ACL are committed to monitoring and reporting on these trends to support the aviation industry in successfully re-introducing flying for the remainder of the summer.
For more information on our schedule data or for any queries regarding ACL’s work, please get in touch -info@acl-uk
How ACL are utilising Power BI to revolutionise slot data for our airport customers.
By Shahbaz Bhatti – Airport Slot Coordinator
Data Analytics has come a long way over the last decade and the aviation industry has been quick to benefit from the wealth of information available. Whilst it is good to have access to huge sets of data, however, being able to uncover insights or visualise this to a non-technical audience is often more challenging. To achieve this Airport Coordination Limited (ACL) have invested in Microsoft Power BI (PBI) to present our valuable data. PBI is a Microsoft business intelligence tool which allows users to connect multiple sources of data into powerful and interactive visuals that can be shared and collaborated on to inform important decision making.
Uses in the Aviation Industry
PBI is widely used within the aviation industry. Some of our biggest customers, including Heathrow Airport Ltd and Manchester Airport Group, have heavily invested in PBI to provide them ‘on the go’ data to drive their business needs. Click here to view an article and video where the CIO of Heathrow Airport Ltd describes how PBI has helped their day-to-day operations. Over the last two years, more of our airport and airline customers have started to invest in PBI; allowing us to collaborate better, provide more insightful analytics and enhance our service by providing reports in ways never seen before.
How ACL Utilise PBI:
ACL’s database is a comprehensive portfolio of airport slots. This asset is the fundamental driver of databases, operations, and resources for all our airport customers. As well as populating Flight Information Display Systems (FIDs), the raw data can be analysed and manipulated in ways to provide useful insights for various themes. ACL has used this data to create reports related to coordination activities, growth forecasts and slot usage investigations and monitoring.
Figure 1 – Dashboard showing Seats and ATM’s comparison at different points of the coordination cycle.
PBI has been an essential tool during the recent pandemic. To preserve their business, one of our biggest customers faced the decision to close more than 60% of their infrastructure. ACL adapted to the new environment and provided quick, precise and simple demand forecast histograms, to assist decision making on falling demand. The interactive visuals allowed users to filter different operators and terminals to understand and predict the result of various scenarios. At a time where our customers required immediate assistance, PBI has delivered on efficiency.
Figure 2 – Terminal Demand Histograms comparing current and projected passenger movements given Covid-19 assumptions.
This has been equally helpful in forecasting uplifts in demand. ACL worked with the same customer to produce histograms providing scenarios for when demand returns and the impact of social distancing measures. These insights allow airport customers to make informed decisions for re-opening in the most economical way.
“ACL produced a very useful power BI report to help us better understand and analyse our flight schedules. The ability to filter by different elements of our schedule – such as terminal, airline, date, arrival or departure – gave us access to the next level of detail beyond a standard coordination report and help understand what was behind our demand. This saved lots of discussion … and made much better use of everyone’s time! It’s a tool we’d find very useful going forward.” – ACL Airport Customer
Reporting can be utilised across the aviation community for groups such as the Industry Resilience Group (IRG) and NATS. The IRG is a collaboration of leading aviation bodies looking at enhancing day to day operating resilience, reducing delays and costs. PBI is effective for them as it allows us to store, visualise and refresh data ahead of the summer season and over several iterations. By building a PBI dashboard we can enhance the raw schedule data. This provides NATS with insights into the levels of congestion and where these are likely to take place. The daily updates we provide to NATS mean they can make reliable decisions on staffing, coinciding with the fall of traffic volumes and, more recently, with the signs of ramp-up in flights. This allows them to anticipate increases in traffic and the effect this has on their own resource planning.
Figure 3 – Example Page from IRG Dashboard showing the decline in ATM’s as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
ACL also utilise PBI internally to improve our own KPI performance and help us reach our customer service goals. Combined data from our SQL and Excel databases are dynamically fed to our centralised intranet page, providing colleagues with accurate, up-to-date data which can be used to assess our own performance objectives and source solutions to benefit our customers.
ACL are committed to our values and to ‘Striving for Better’. We endeavour to explore and endorse new and innovative avenues, stay up to date with industry norms and enhance our services. PBI has allowed us to expand our data analytics knowledge which will only increase through further use and collaboration, allowing us to better support our customers and the aviation industry.
If you would like to explore how PBI and ACL analytics can support your airport please email us at pbihelp@acl-uk.org.
As reports of decreasing flights become more and more familiar, ACL’s Data Analyst, Chris Butler, looks at how cancellation activity can help us understand how allocated slots have declined, as well as what to expect as the summer season progresses.
Following the granting of widespread alleviation from the use-it-or-lose-it rule for Summer 2020 there have been extensive cancellations of airport slots as a result of widespread travel restrictions, meaning that slot volumes have been substantially reduced. Airport Coordination Limited (ACL) has seen weekly slot volumes fall as low as 9% of the volume seen last summer, with weekly allocated seats falling further to less than 4% of last year’s volume in April.
Significant reduction in slot volume was first seen at the end of Winter 2019, where total allocated slots declined by 5.2% from the beginning of March to the end of the winter season, a fall of over 70,000 slots. Slot decline accelerated through March, with weekly volumes falling to just 60% of the volume seen in the previous winter season.
This decline only worsened as the Summer 2020 season began. At the beginning of June, total allocated summer season slots at UK airports were 48% lower than at the same point last year. This represents a sharp decline, with a deficit of over 730,000 slots year on year.
To date, decline in slot volume has substantially affected the early months of the Summer season, as airlines focus on their schedules held at the beginning of the season. By observing the total slot volume at monthly snapshots we can see how slot decline at the beginning of April was focussed on the first month of the season, with decline further into the summer months emerging at subsequent monthly snapshots.
Slots scheduled in June fell by 73% from the beginning of May to the beginning of June (a decline of over 185,000 slots), indicating the rate at which slots are being cancelled. These monthly snapshots show significant slot decline continuing as the season progresses, resulting from airlines cancelling slots on a piecewise basis due to resource restrictions and continued uncertainty regarding the possibility of increased flying.
As of 1 June, using S19 weekly slot volumes as a comparison, substantial decline is seen as far as the end of June (W13), where allocated slots are currently around 30% of the volume seen last year with some airlines yet to cancel slots held in July.
This currently represents a slight increase versus May, where slot volume was around 10% of last year’s volume. Caution should be taken however when looking further into the season (where slot volumes remain as high as 95%) as analysis of cancellation patterns indicates that slot decline is expected to roll into the coming months, as airlines amend their schedules further into the summer.
This chart breaks down the total cancelled slots by the month that those cancellations were made. The data indicates the pattern seen in cancellation activity, suggesting that the remaining summer volume will also reduce as cancellations reach further into the summer months. The scale of this reduction, however, is difficult to predict whilst the ongoing challenges posed by travel restrictions and quarantine periods remain unclear.
Whilst positivity is emerging from airlines regarding the re-introduction of air travel this summer, any uplift in flying will be difficult to forecast due to the rolling nature of cancellation activity. Despite this, ACL’s industry relations and the analysis of our schedule data will allow us to identify the early indications of any increases in flying, which may enable other members of the aviation industry to prepare for the challenges that an uplift in flying will bring.
Our experienced coordination manager, Pete Robinson, recalls his working from home journey and how he has coordinated some of the worlds busiest airports from his daughters bedroom.
Shortly before the UK went into official lockdown, I spent a day in mid-March touring London’s airports. Aviation was just beginning to slow down, and I was conscious of the noticeable reduction in movements and the presence of stationary aircraft at Stansted, Luton, Heathrow and Gatwick.
On the second day of the lockdown I celebrated 15 years at Airport Coordination Limited (ACL). During those years I have experienced closures and disruption of all kinds from severe weather, natural disasters, terrorism, conflicts and the grounding of aircraft fleets. Even the week-long closure of European airspace due to an Icelandic volcano in 2010 pales into insignificance next to the impact of Covid-19 on the worldwide aviation industry.
The first week of working from home was strange. I usually spend two and a half hours a day on my M25 commute and contrary to most, I was strangely experiencing withdrawal symptoms. I had to accept, with the schools closed, and my partner also working from home, finding a quiet place to work was going to be difficult. Luckily, only a few months earlier, we had bought each of our girls’ desks for their bedrooms and so, kicking my 5-year-old out, I began coordinating slots from my daughter’s bedroom, with her surrounding toys for company.
Some of the “winged” toys keeping me company in lieu of real aircraft!
So how do you coordinate some of the worlds most complex airports when your whole team is working from home? Less than 12 months earlier, ACL had invested in Microsoft Teams and trained all our staff in its use. Whilst its need had been limited before, this investment truly paid off. Video calls, screen and document sharing are the new norm across ACL. Guests from outside our organisation can easily join video calls and it has allowed us to provide the same level of communication with our customers in other remote locations. Each week ACL’s CEO, Edmond Rose, hosts a Q&A session and updates us on company affairs, and colleagues take it in turns to host regular afterwork quizzes, helping to maintain social contact with the wider ACL team.
During lockdown, I begin each morning running reports for the four international airports I manage. This helps me understand the schedule movements from the last 24 hours. I monitor travel restrictions, UK Foreign and Commonwealth travel advice and the international press for any significant developments. I then correlate these against the schedule changes we have received from airlines. This information is then fed to the rest of my team via my daily Teams update. Communication with colleagues has certainly changed, but video calls have allowed us to continue enjoying face-to-face interaction. I have a daily call with my Head of Coordination and then a further call between myself and my own team. These calls are crucial for relaying updates and activity across ACL and are an opportunity to agree any actions for the coming days.
My usual morning tea break with colleagues has now been replaced with a short stroll around my garden and tending to my plants. Some great weather and the additional time at home has left my garden looking in fine shape. What started as a home-schooling project, growing some vegetable seeds with my daughters, has developed into a gardening obsession, and I have proudly been sharing updates with my colleagues on my horticulture successes.
The evolution of my horticultural obsession.
A further highlight has been the successful roll-out of virtual coordinator training. My initial nerves over conducting training online have not been met and Teams has allowed me to share my screen with multiple users demonstrating tasks, encouraging discussions, and continuing the high level of training we provide to our coordinators.
After two months of daily cancellation activity across ACL’s airport portfolio, we are beginning to see signs of easing across Europe and there are indications that planes may return to the skies. One thing is for sure, the Summer 20 season will look very different from how it was first coordinated. The industry continues to consider how social distancing can be enacted and without concreate plans or guidance, it remains difficult to predict how demand and capacity will look in the coming twelve months.
So, as many of us adapt to the new normal, I have found myself a more suitable home and am coordinating from our spare bedroom, which I have temporarily converted to a home office. Working from home is staying a little while longer, but ACL will continue to provide our expert coordination services from whatever locations our staff find themselves, and we will continue to be both proactive and reactive to the challenges ahead.
Coordinating slots from my new temporary home office
ACL’s newest recruit, Wade Chan, discusses what it’s like starting a new job during a nation-wide lock-down.
Wade performing coordination from the comfort of her living room
On March 18th I received joining instructions from Marion, reconfirming my new role as a Coordinator at Airport Coordination Limited (ACL). To the amusement of my then colleagues, my start date was April 1st, April Fool’s Day; making them joke I had accepted a prank job. Whilst, I knew this was not true, with COVID-19 beginning to impact many jobs in aviation, I did start to worry.
The UK went into lockdown the following week and I began to consider if a new job was a wise decision. A few days later an email from ACL pinged on my phone ‘Change of joining Instructions’: my heart sunk. Expecting the job to be put on hold, I was relieved to read that my arrival time had merely been adjusted to a new time.
By the time I received my next email a week later my heart was pounding, and I delayed opening it for several hours. Again, my fears were misplaced, and it was simply another information update. I began to feel more confident. ACL were an organised company and I was looking forward to a new start in a new job.
April 1st came and mercifully it was not an April Fool’s joke! With great excitement, I entered ACL’s office and was immediately struck by its emptiness. A man quickly appeared with a welcoming smile and introduced himself as Richard Cann, Head of Coordination. Richard gave me a quick run down of the company, his job role, the plan for my induction and how I would immediately be working from home. Communication between the company was taking place across Microsoft Teams. Richard bought up the programme and demonstrated a call to Ingrid Hainy, my new line manager. Soon after I was given a work laptop and shown how I could access our system remotely. Within an hour I was back home; I had met only one colleague and was continuing my first day from my living room.
I successfully managed to log into the company VPN and made my first Teams call to my new manager. It was strange communicating in this method. Ingrid was extremely organised, welcoming and had crafted a whole training schedule via Teams. I met my first teammate online, Kavi Ghanasegaram, a coordinator like me. I would be shadowing Kavi to get an idea of what coordination involves. It was interesting to see how the slot system worked. Ingrid then began teaching me SSIM training and on my third day a meeting was arranged for me to meet ACL’s CEO, Edmond. Throughout my working life, I have never met the CEO of a company I worked for. To meet a CEO, almost in person, was another first for me; Edmond was very friendly and supportive.
My next week could be summarised as meetings galore! I met various members of ACL’s management and learnt about their roles. My first team meeting felt strange and I had little clue what was being discussed but working alongside Kavi made understanding and learning easier. Any issues were just a Teams call away; this made settling in easy despite being at home. Shahbaz Bhatti, another coordinator, was to be my daily trainer and mentor. Training sessions with him are very precise and detailed. Distance training feels odd initially but is easily adaptable.
A month on in my coordination role at ACL I feel comfortable handling messages. I was even entrusted with the responsibility of running Heathrow’s operation for a day! Though nervous initially, it allowed me to handle tasks myself and I gained direct expose to dynamic operational changes. I was grateful to Ingrid for giving me both the opportunity and for a chance to grow my confidence, something which is increasing day by day. Working from home is a unique experience. Everyone I have met at ACL (virtually) has been very friendly, helpful, and supportive. I look forward to meeting them all in person once lockdown ends.
As our industry navigates one of the biggest challenges to aviation, we look at the more localised impact of Covid-19 and how Airport Coordination Limited (ACL)’s coordinator’s workloads have changed in the weeks following widespread alleviation.
by Chris Butler- Airport Capacity Analyst
The upheaval caused by Covid-19 and the associated granting of alleviation from the need to use slots to maintain historic rights in the summer season has resulted in mass flight cancellations, airport closures and other disruptions. This has meant that the usual volume of coordination messages received has varied significantly from what ACL would expect at the beginning of a ‘normal’ summer season and as such resulted in a significant increase in activity required by the coordinator community.
Towards the end of the Winter coordination season the volume of messages per week closely followed the levels seen in 2019. Following the increased impact of the outbreak of coronavirus however, the volume of messages received by ACL steadily increased. With alleviation of slots for the summer season granted, this culminated in an unprecedented peak in messages received, as the airlines responded by cutting back their schedules. At this peak, ACL managed over 13,500 individual messages in one week at over 40 different airports, from hundreds of different airlines.
This peak in coordination messages represented a 300% increase versus the same week in 2019, with substantial increases seen in the weeks leading up to the peak.
In addition to an increase in the volume of messages received during the peak period, the complexity of coordination also increased. This is due to unusual circumstances such as partial and full airport closures, as well as cancellation messages from airlines covering long periods of the season.
The result of this is a decrease in automation, meaning coordinators have a higher volume of messages that must be handled manually. The proportion of messages needing to be handled manually has nearly doubled.
Utilising our experience as the world’s oldest independent slot coordinator and from our frequent experience managing peak demand at airports during special or sudden events, ACL has responded to these challenges by providing flexible and efficient coordination in an extremely difficult time for the whole aviation industry.
Whilst it is likely that we have seen the initial peak of message volumes for the season, these challenges will continue. It is likely that we will see further cancellation activity in the weeks ahead as airlines adjust to changing circumstances throughout the summer season. ACL will continue to react to these challenges, benefitting from our experience and unique industry relationships, aiming to continue to provide coordination excellence in these difficult circumstances.
ACL acknowledges that the European institutions have decided to extend the temporary waiver from non-use of slots proposed by the European Commission so that it covers the full Summer 2020 season.
ACL will grant alleviation from non-use of slots to airlines at the 11 airports it coordinates across the European Union and the United Kingdom from 1 March 2020 to 24 October 2020; and alleviation from non-use of slots for flights to and from mainland China and Hong Kong for the period from 23 January 2020 to 29 February 2020.
Airlines are required to hand back slots that they seek to claim alleviation for at the earliest opportunity. Slots that are held and are not subsequently operated will not be granted alleviation as other carriers will have been denied the opportunity to use the available capacity.
