Air India will reshuffle flight schedules, hold nightly meetings and ask employees to accurately report flight delays and their causes to improve the airline’s on-time delivery (OTP) performance, chief executive officer and managing director Campbell Wilson said on Friday.

In March this year, the Directorate-General for Civil Aviation (DGCA) approved Air India to operate 2,456 flights per week in its summer flight schedule, which began on March 27 and ends on October 22.

The airline is acquiring better “customer-centric systems” to proactively notify passengers of schedule changes or delays in advance and allow them to change flights themselves if necessary, Wilson explained in his note to employees.

“During my conversations with other Air Indians and our customers, a very common request is the need to improve our on-time performance, schedule reliability and recover better when a disruption occurs,” he said.

Air India’s on-time performance at four metro airports — Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai — was 83 percent lower than AirAsia India, Vistara and Go First in July, according to the DGCA.

Wilson said that in order to improve OTP, the airline’s cross-functional team, which included staff from various departments such as network planning, engineering, ground services and the Integrated Operations Control Center (IOCC), conducted a comprehensive assessment of the upcoming flight schedule for the winter season (October 22 this year). year to March 23 next year).

The IOCC is the airline’s nerve center and manages its flight network 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and plays a crucial role in ensuring high OTP.

Wilson said the aforementioned team conducted a full review of “block time,” airport connection time, and aircraft and flight crew rotations for the winter flight schedule.

The time it takes for a flight to clear the departure airport gate and reach the arrival airport gate is called “block time”.

“A significant number of improvements have been identified and we will be investigating the airport slots required to achieve them,” noted Wilson.

Air India is unlikely to get all the slot changes it wants for this winter season, he said.

“But now that we know what we want, we can gradually refine it season after season. And most importantly, we now have a robust and cross-functional process to better plan schedules for future seasons,” he added.

Tata Group took control of Air India on January 27 after winning the bid for the airline on October 8 last year.

Wilson, who was with Singapore Airlines Group for 26 years, joined Air India in July.

Wilson said the airline introduced a “nightly pre-planning meeting” to allow the IOCC to pre-emptively identify risks and work with key stakeholders to develop solutions to ensure a high OTP.

The airline, he said, is focusing more on the root causes of delays and putting more emphasis on the measures being taken to mitigate recurrences.

“We all have an obligation to report delays and their causes accurately,” Wilson added.