Convince with reliability and punctuality

Eurowings has been reliable (>99%) and punctual (~80%) for its customers for months now, making it once again one of the most reliable and punctual airlines in Europe. Eurowings as an airline is currently doing everything in its power to guarantee this for the busy summer and to be among the best in the industry in terms of punctuality and reliability: the airline is investing around 50 million euros to optimise its operational processes - and to compensate for the remaining deficits of its system partners as far as possible.

With the SCOPE program – Sustainable customer oriented process enhancement – Eurowings is currently examining all operational processes on the ground and in the air. Employees from various operational and commercial departments of the company are working together on numerous measures to prepare Eurowings for the summer flight schedule. The aim is to offer passengers reliable flight operations. The way: Coordinated processes and services that focus on the passenger. This is how Eurowings intends to implement its quality promise and significantly increase customer satisfaction.

Four strands of action, twelve initiatives

Along four lines of action – planning, maintenance, process optimisation, dealing with irregularities – SCOPE bundles the twelve most important initiatives that are decisive for the 2019 summer timetable. Clear responsibilities have been defined for each initiative.

On the one hand, it is a matter of combating causes and eliminating influential factors, such as ensuring better availability of the fleet or managing service providers more closely. On the other hand, Eurowings reduces the symptoms of delays and compensates for external factors, e.g. by correcting its flight schedule, planning buffers and longer check-in times and making special efforts to ensure that its aircraft take off punctually in the morning. Because only if the first wave goes well does the whole day go well.

Focus on the customer

When dealing with irregularities, Eurowings further sharpened its customer focus. Constant, fast and reliable customer communication is the basis for successful Irreg Handling. Eurowings optimizes customer information via e-mail and SMS, as well as communication with handling agents, service centers and crews. Eurowings is also working on automating and digitizing processes and services. The newly founded Eurowings Digital GmbH is developing solutions that enable passengers to quickly and easily rebook, cancel and create rail vouchers.

During boarding, the handling of hand luggage is a critical success factor. It is not unusual for a flight to take off late because baggage has to be brought into the hold at the last minute. Both at the gate and in the cabin, Eurowings is now simplifying the hand baggage process and ensuring consistent compliance with the hand baggage rules. Every traveller who adheres to the baggage rules contributes to a more efficient process and thus to a punctual departure. At the end of January, Eurowings tested changed boarding procedures at individual gates at Cologne/Bonn Airport. A modified setup at the gate was tested, with guests boarding over two lanes, new announcements on the subject of hand luggage and the deployment of a second agent at the gate. In March a further test run is planned in Cologne, in which the knowledge gained so far will be implemented and the new processes applied to all Eurowings gates and all Eurowings flights from Cologne. With the start of the summer flight schedule, they are to be gradually introduced at further home bases.

The Eurowings SCOPE project is part of the Lufthansa Group's 'Operational Excellence 2019' programme, in which the hub airlines Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines and SWISS are also involved – with many individual projects in which all the airlines in the Lufthansa Group are also leveraging synergies.

The programme managers of SCOPE are Jörn Messner, Head of Flight Operations Support Eurowings, and Michael Klee, Head of Ground Operations Eurowings. Michael Knitter, COO Eurowings Group, and Oliver Wagner, CCO Eurowings Group, are responsible for the programme on the management side.