Soaring to new heights: Ensuring JetBlue’s operational reliability
Charting a path to data-driven excellence
Discover how New York-based airline JetBlue continued its journey to improve operational reliability with Qvest's data-driven approach. By first introducing a modern data stack—and fostering a culture of consistency and accountability—JetBlue solidified its commitment to continuous improvement and consistent, exceptional customer experiences.
SITUATION
Focusing on on-time performance
JetBlue has long been known for quality experiences at affordable prices. With about 1,000 daily flights to 100+ destinations, JetBlue has added numerous Caribbean, Latin America, and transatlantic flights, increasingly establishing itself as a leisure carrier to upscale destinations. After a sustained period of growth, JetBlue has put even more focus on boosting operational reliability, consistency, and cost efficiency.
Across the industry, departure compliance—meaning on-time, regulation-adherent takeoffs—is the standard for measuring operational reliability. This in turn improves passenger satisfaction and financial performance. Beyond arrival and departure metrics such as departure compliance, opportunity existed for a better understanding of which parts of the operational process could most benefit from improvement.
Late arrivals to planned vacations, lost baggage, and missed connecting flights can ruin plans and permanent loss of customers to competitors. To improve its brand image and overall customer satisfaction, JetBlue has continued to invest in a data-driven approach to operations.
Assessing the heartbeat of on-time performance
At the center of operational reliability is the aircraft turn. This means preparing a plane for its next flight, including unloading and loading passengers, refueling, cleaning, and maintenance checks. The process also includes the coordinated effort among aircraft and ground operations, in-flight crews, and third party service teams—and is highly interrelated and correlated with on on-time arrivals and departures. Given the fast-paced nature of this work, the process can break down due to lack of coordination, resulting in delays.
To mitigate delays in the aircraft turn, JetBlue needed to understand what steps to improve and track over time. Rolling out standardized goals and metrics across teams was crucial to improving overall customer experience.
SOLUTION
Defining goals, eliminating ambiguity
Running an airline is like conducting an orchestra. It involves constant data collection and analysis to optimize flight schedules, ensure efficiency and passenger satisfaction, and handle unpredictable variables. The operations team is the percussion section, always keeping a beat.
To get started, JetBlue identified 45 individual events as key components in the aircraft turn process, each owned by separate teams. Understanding objective data for turn events and adjusting goals and resources appropriately allows for a more holistic approach in improving the aircraft turn process.
Qvest and JetBlue operations teams immediately started focus groups involving directors, supervisors, and crewmembers on the ground to understand how each person was measuring, tracking, and responding to the current data available. To further understand the current state of JetBlue aircraft turn operations, Qvest also shadowed crewmembers at JetBlue JFK terminal.
Developing a unified data model
Working alongside JetBlue Industrial Engineering team and in partnership with JetBlue’s Data Engineering team, Qvest helped build automated data ingestions and transformations of the aircraft turn events. Qvest helped streamline previously manual data processes, turning them into a robust data pipeline using modern software development practices through the use of dbt for data transformation and version control.
Data is now available for analysis on a consistent basis across the company. Qvest also built 20+ dbt models for detailed analysis on each aircraft turn event baggage-related data to help station supervisors, directors, and executives understand what is going on behind the scenes of each individual aircraft turn. By bringing a software development approach to data engineering, Qvest enabled transparent and repeatable code development, peer review, and code deployment process for the data controlling aircraft turns.
Qvest’s partnership and business expertise has been an important contribution to our commitment to be the most data driven airline in the world. The Qvest team helps to ensure our data is trusted and reliable, and we have the ability to standardize and scale analysis for more informed decision-making.
Streamlined reporting and accountability
An integral component of making aircraft turn data available and more visible was Qvest’s implementation of unified BI dashboards. Clear, standardized goals of compliance and turn performance were pivotal to crewmembers from all levels being able to meet goals to improve aircraft turn performance.
Having a suite of screens in a unified suite of BI dashboards means more efficient data exploration and identification of non-compliant events to improve performance. The screens serve executive level users, directors, and supervisors, allowing them to approach the data at different levels of granularity. This results in the timely identification of events that impact overall operational reliability and the ability to adjust goals, staffing, and management of resources directly involved in the aircraft turn process.
Having a strong suite of dashboards helps reduce ambiguity of what goals to hit on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, amplifying accountability and laying the groundwork for constant improvement.
Having a central, consistent place to view aircraft turn metrics allows us to agree on what’s most important—and provide clear goals of what to improve. Qvest’s contribution to this endeavor was game-changing and critical.
RESULTS
Clear skies ahead: Goals and global alignment
In the coming months, JetBlue will roll out and scale additional goals and aircraft turn metrics through its analytics platform to a global team of employees. Teams will be able to track 700+ daily aircraft turns and events with detail that was not previously available.
This will eliminate reliance on manually entered data and align all crew members to a cohesive mission.
JetBlue’s analytics-driven approach allows the carrier to soar to new heights by blending data-driven precision with collaborative ingenuity. Qvest’s rigorous approach, technical expertise, and strategic thinking have been key to this partnership. By continuing to grow a culture of transparency and accountability, JetBlue ensures efficient and seamless departures and turnarounds, providing excellent customer experiences and continuing their climb to top operational reliability.
Unlock the power of your data
Clean, unified data is crucial for any project to succeed, but it’s only the beginning. Orchestrating the right mix of people and technology to ingest, transform and harmonize your data is essential. See firsthand why JetBlue and Fortune 1000 companies are partnering with Qvest to put their data to work. Submit the fields below for more information:
