Global air traffic is increasing. Data from EUROCONTROL shows that in 2025, air traffic across Europe was 4.3% higher than in 2024 and reached 99.9% of 2019 levels. In the US, traffic in September 2025 was up 5.8% compared to September 2019. This trend is reflected in other regions.
Flight schedules are getting busier but operators’ plans aren’t always realistic. In January 2025, it was announced that the US Department of Transportation (DOT) fined JetBlue $2 million for chronic delays affecting four flights over a period of five months. The DOT prohibits companies from advertising unrealistic schedules that ultimately affect customers.
Even small delays can have huge ripple effects, so organizations must prepare quickly to handle increasing traffic amid ongoing labor shortages.
In this article, we discuss some New Year’s resolutions for 2026 that can help ground handlers close visibility gaps and manage the pressure.
Resolution 1: Plan for Unpredictable Conditions
The aviation industry has always involved the unexpected. Weather changes, late arrivals, staffing gaps, equipment unavailability, and even minor technical issues can disrupt processes with little warning.
Companies can now handle this unpredictability more effectively by using live operational data instead of relying on static schedules and post-event reporting. All staff should have a shared, real-time operational picture that reflects what’s actually happening, moment to moment.
In practice, this requires centralizing data from across the operation into a single view that all relevant teams can rely on. From there, dashboards can replace hindsight with situational awareness. For example, teams can:
- Intervene while there’s still time: Late-running tasks should be visible immediately, not discovered after departures are already delayed. If baggage loading is taking longer than planned or a catering vehicle arrives late, supervisors can reassign staff, adjust task sequences, or escalate before delays become unavoidable.
- Prevent resource conflicts. A clear, live view of who and what is assigned where allows teams to notice clashes early, such as two flights requiring the same specialist handler at the same time.
- Detecting risk trends: Repeated congestion at a particular gate, recurring equipment availability issues, or a rise in minor maintenance delays may point to broader planning or infrastructure problems. Root causes can then be discovered and addressed.
Resolution 2: Use Predictive Maintenance to Improve GSE Availability
GSE shortages can be better avoided through predictive maintenance. In 2026, operators can review their strategies to ensure predictive maintenance outputs are being used to make better decisions on a daily basis – for example, knowing which tugs or GPUs can be relied on during peak periods, and which should be inspected before they become a problem.
This reduces last-minute equipment changes, protects turnaround timelines, and avoids putting teams in a position where they’re forced to work with failing assets.
Resolution 3: Measure Performance with Transparency and Context
Traditional KPIs such as off-block times or average delays only describe outcomes. In 2026, ground handling teams can determine why minutes were gained or lost during each turnaround and whether those delays were within their control.
Granular, time-stamped operational data makes this possible. Teams can then see the sequence of events behind a turnaround – a team briefing starting late, a ground support equipment change, or a knock-on effect from an upstream disruption.
Establishing a factual record about what happened also limits finger-pointing when performance is under review. Managers can assess accountability based on evidence rather than assumptions – for example, distinguishing between a handling delay caused by late equipment positioning and one caused by a security or border control issue.
More Comprehensive Data with Automated Timestamping
Emerging technologies are increasing the volume and accuracy of performance data. Computer-vision tools, for example, enable automated timestamping of key turnaround events such as chocks on, doors open, or equipment arrival. As these tools become more widely adopted, ground handlers will have richer datasets to analyze, making trend identification and root-cause analysis more reliable.
Automated turnaround timestamps significantly improve the accuracy of target off-block time (TOBT) predictions. When historical data on these timestamps are used to calculate predicted off-block time (POBT), the result is consistently more reliable than manual estimates. Allegedly, accuracy can be as high as 90% when using Machine Learning for prediction.
This higher accuracy matters because stand allocation depends on knowing exactly when an aircraft will vacate a stand. TOBT is often a late, judgement-based estimate, which limits planners’ ability to make timely decisions and forces the use of excess buffers.
POBT, based on accurate, automated data, provides earlier and more dependable readiness estimates, enables more efficient stand use, and reduces knock-on delays, costs, and emissions.
Resolution 4: Integrate Safety and Operational Data to Prevent Incidents
Safety is too often managed only by reporting after an incident has taken place. In 2026, the resolution is to use data to deeply embed safety into every action.
That means cross-referencing incident reports with factors like shift patterns and equipment status to detect high-risk conditions early. For example, if minor incidents spike when overtime fatigue is high, this warning sign should trigger interventions like extra briefings, or a review of whether staff are taking sufficient breaks.
Enhanced GSE
An IATA study found that most ground damage incidents are caused by equipment collisions, and projects that annual ground damage costs could nearly double to around $10 billion by 2035 without better prevention.
Using data wisely can reverse this trend. For example, telemetry data from enhanced GSE (equipment fitted with IoT sensors) can reveal where the risks lie. Analyzing variables like speed, location, distance between GSE, and operator details can identify unsafe operating patterns, recurring near-miss scenarios, and pinpoint where procedural or training interventions are most likely to reduce incidents.
IATA notes that adopting enhanced GSE that has collision sensors could prevent many crashes and cut ground damage costs by 42% – with the added benefit of cutting ground support CO2 emissions by 1.8 million tons per year.
Resolution 5: Build Resilience Against Workforce Shortages
Labor shortages in ground handling persist. Resilience starts with understanding how the workforce you do have is actually being used in order to allocate staff more effectively.
Analysis can expose bottlenecks where, for example, only one individual on a shift is qualified to perform a certain safety-critical or time-sensitive task. Such weak points can be addressed through targeted training to prevent ongoing disruption.
Generally speaking, Learning and Development is most effective when guided by evidence. Instead of broad, generic training programs, data can highlight exactly which skills are scarce, which tasks frequently cause delays when specific staff are absent, and where additional certifications would deliver the greatest operational resilience.
Finally, historical workload and delay data enables dynamic scheduling. Planning schedules around peak periods, seasonal patterns, and known disruption windows enables operators to deploy limited resources in the most impactful way possible.
Resolution 6: Operationalize Sustainability
Environmental goals persist and ground handlers can better reach those goals by using data.
Since auxiliary power units and other non-electric GSE burn fuel while waiting, tracking data on idle times lets operators detect at which gates or for which flights engines are running longer than desired. This opens the door to finding the root cause and resolving the issue.
Operators can also analyze the efficiency of task sequencing and route planning. Where feasible, movements where equipment travels empty or without purpose can be minimized.
How Does Aviation Management Software Support These Resolutions?
Zafire’s aviation management software underpins many of these resolutions by centralizing and capturing rich operational data across key processes like turnaround management, baggage handling, and load management.
Tasks from arrival to departure are logged in real-time, giving teams and managers a shared, up-to-date picture of progress, task completion, and potential bottlenecks, which helps teams intervene earlier and coordinate more effectively during unpredictable events.
Our solutions include built-in dashboards and reporting tools that provide insights into performance and trends. They also integrate with external Business Intelligence platforms and other operational systems via APIs, enabling deeper analysis and cross-functional data flows.
Conclusion
As air traffic volumes continue to rise, ground handling teams in 2026 will need to rely less on static plans and more on data-driven decision-making – in real-time and by analyzing long-term trends.
To summarize, here are some New Year’s resolutions to improve efficiency. Enhance visibility into live operations to stay prepared for unpredictable conditions. Use predictive maintenance for GSE to optimize equipment availability. Evaluate turnaround processes at a granular level to detect inefficiencies and identify improvement opportunities.
Analyze safety data to pinpoint root causes. Analyze workforce data to allocate staff more effectively and compensate for labor shortages. And finally, investigate GSE movements to find opportunities to reduce emissions. If you’d like to know more about our aviation software suite, contact us today.
