Air Transport System Agility: The Agile Response Capability (ARC) Methodology for Crisis Preparedness

Abstract

Aviation is a highly inter-connected system. This means that a problem in one area may cause effects in other countries or parts of the Air Transport System (ATS). Examples range from local air traffic disruptions to the 2010 volcanic ash crisis. Agility, like resilience, refers to the ability to cope with dynamics and complexity in a flexible manner, by adjusting and adapting performance and the organization of work to fit changing demands. The aim of this work is to help ATS organizations with increasing their agility in the face of crises and challenges. To this end, this article presents the Agile Response Capability (ARC) guidance material. ARC was developed from a literature study and a number of case studies that combined past event analysis, interviews, focus groups, workshops, questionnaires, and exercise observation methodologies. ARC aims to help aviation organizations to set up, run, and evaluate exercises promoting agility to handle disturbances and crises, and to enable structured pro-active and retrospective analysis of scenarios and actual events. The elements and steps of the ARC approach are illustrated and exemplified with data from three case studies. The ARC methodology facilitates more agile and resilient ways of responding to the fundamental and novel surprises that have become almost commonplace in the past decade, and are likely to continue to do so.