Moving Forward with Lean

Airlines today face constant operational pressures—from flight disruptions and staffing challenges to complex regulations and growing customer expectations. While these challenges affect the entire industry, they also highlight opportunities to improve.

At The Lean Airline™, we see Lean as a growth strategy: a way to maximize customer value and increase revenue using existing resources—people, tools, and inventory—by continuously identifying and eliminating waste. Kaizen, on the other hand, is the approach to building a culture that engages all employees in this continuous improvement cycle. By simplifying work, stabilizing processes, standardizing tasks, and empowering teams to solve problems where the work happens, airlines can turn operational challenges into opportunities.

Here are some ideas to reflect on what airlines can move away from—and move toward—in the new year.

Move away from

• Firefighting daily disruptions – instead, focus on proactive problem-solving and building stable processes.

• Planning as if everything will go perfectly – design for variability, include buffers, and build resilience.

• Overloading crews, maintenance, and ground staff – respect people by balancing workload and enabling teams to work effectively.

• Relying on experience or heroics – create reliable systems and standard work instead of depending on individuals.

• Adding complexity instead of simplifying work – eliminate unnecessary steps, improve flow, and reduce waste.

• Introducing new tools before stabilizing processes – ensure processes are standardized and stable before implementing technology.

• Managing performance only through reports and numbers – observe operations at the frontline and solve problems where they happen.

• Optimizing cost at the expense of reliability, safety, or customer experience – aim for balanced performance across all areas.

• Treating improvement as occasional projects – make continuous improvement part of everyday work.

• Ignoring feedback from the frontline – engage employees and act on their insights to improve processes.

Move toward

• Designing operations that handle disruptions predictably – robust systems absorb variability without chaos.

• Planning realistic schedules and resource capacity – match crew, aircraft, and maintenance resources to actual needs.

• Removing obstacles to make work safer and easier – eliminate bottlenecks and create a supportive work environment.

• Building processes that reduce reliance on heroics – rely on standard work, not individual effort.

• Simplifying work and standardizing critical tasks – consistent processes improve reliability and flow.

• Improving processes before adding new tools or technology – stabilize operations first to ensure technology helps rather than complicates.

• Leading daily where work happens – managers observe, support, and coach teams on the frontline.

• Balancing cost, reliability, safety, and customer experience – optimize value across all dimensions.

• Making continuous improvement part of everyday work – embed kaizen into daily routines.

• Listening and acting on frontline feedback – empower teams to identify and solve problems at the source.

Even small changes can make a big difference. Lean and Kaizen aren’t just concepts—they’re structured ways of working that help teams feel supported, reduce unnecessary stress, improve the experience for everyone, and grow the business.

The new year feels like the perfect time to take these steps forward!