Preface
About this book
This book is a reaction to my professional day-to-day experience. There is a steady debate about perceived shortcomings of performance metrics and why another metric is better suited for measuring a specific aspect of air transportation.
Throughout the years, I made several observations:
- performance of air navigation, in general, is discussed on different levels ranging from policy / strategic level to low-level numerical aspects by individuals with diverse backgrounds in terms of profession and training;
- these performance experts tend to mix concepts, methodologies, and the related terminology without a more profound separation of terms and so-called frameworks;
- there is a heavy focus on the metric, i.e. a key performance metric, that should be ‘simple’ yet uniquely attributable to one actor and considering all potential factors that may influence the metric;
- there is a competition of projects (and programmes) to identify and develop new/different metrics, and ultimately proliferating the universe of (operational) performance measures;
- … (too many to list them all here)
This book does not ascribe to the idea of the One Ring in the ‘Lord of the Rings’ to ‘rule them all’. However, the aim of this book is to provide a reference work for (Operational) Performance in Air Navigation.
Writing this book has been a journey in two ways:
- first, it helped and forced me to proper formulate topics, ideas, and concepts I had compiled over the years; and
- second, it flags how much I still do not know and need to study in the future.
Hence, this book is not the ultimate answer, but provides a bais for the interested reader to understand the concepts of performance management and how it applies to air navigation (and possibly air transportation). And, in particular, this book aims to facilitate the aforementioned discussions.
The book is divided into several parts.
- The first part is targeted at high-level performance concepts and as such applicable in general.
- The second part focusses on operational aspects.
Who should read this book?
This book is written for everybody with an interest in (operational) performance of air navigation. The audience therefore includes interested readers, managers, regulators, and researchers.
Addressing such a spectrum poses a challenge. While I aim to provide respective links to supporting material, I understand that interested describes a reader with some basic aviation or air traffic management knowledge or the desire to acquire the required background knowledge outside this book.
For students (or young professionals) I plan to add a set of questions at the end of each chapter to facilitate the learning process.
Note: This feature may develop asynchron from the book content.
How is this book written?
This book was written using R/RStudio and the bookdown package. The book is openly accessible at Github. To read the book online, use this link.
You can access the book online or download the full book or the associated RMarkdown files.
This project / book is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 4.0 License.