Operation Highflight Business Simulation

There are three business simulations in the series, here you will find the Operation Highflight Business Simulation. Also take a look at the competency development opportunity in Exercise Brainwave and our Dragon’s Den is extremely popular for graduate and sales team development.
Additional and bespoke scenarios can be included into the activities to align with your competency requirements. The activities also present an excellent opportunity for participants of an established group to practice new skills and transfer learning following a development initiative.

Our business simulations present you with a series of realistic activities that simulate real life people and process management situations, they present an ideal opportunity for competence-based development or assessment, team development and corporate events.

Our business simulations are fun and focused and with many events impacting simultaneously they provide the opportunity to experience and manage and respond to a range of challenging situations . The characteristics of the group, their interactions, experience, and their interpretation of the role ensures that no two events produce the same outcome. While there is opportunity to assess many aspects of competency we suggest assessment criteria provided below based upon the exercise activities, although your in-house assessors may observe and note behaviours demonstrated beyond this framework.

Operation Highflight

Operation Highflight is a one day event that involves participants in managing a range of events that simultaneously impact operations at DevonAir, a fictitious Airline.

Overnight the training venue has been transformed to become the DevonAir operations centre, the theme indicative of an airline contributes to developing authenticity. Reality strikes almost immediately are participants are faced with incoming phone calls from the outside world regarding a range of concerns including, complaints, concerns, and publicity matters both positive and negative. Participants are provided with a correspondence in tray, in the form of memos and letters to inform them of the issues involved in their work at DevonAir.

DevonAir is a private limited company engaged in the air charter business. During the nineties the company gained a good reputation for providing efficient and good quality air transport services to the `more specialized’ sector of the package holiday industry, In June 2011, DevonAir entered the `business air charter’ sector – and is currently struggling to gain more than a minute share of this small but highly lucrative market the increasingly serious impact of the recession and the increase in oil prices has heralded a period of great difficulty for the company.

As you would expect this is a very busy airline and the operations centre receives constant communications by fax from international air traffic controllers and aviation authorities, of course these communications must receive urgent attention since they require decisions on a range of issues including safety and security matters. In addition there are a number of employee matters connected to the recent redundancies and the ongoing effects on morale are having an impact on rotas and scheduling of cabin crew, pilots and ground staff. Pressure increases with the unexpected arrival of an auditor from the aviation authority.

A word about participation

First and most important, this is a business simulation activity – and it is not expected or required that participants become excellent in their various specialist roles overnight, or, for that matter, they know anything about civil aviation, although most people have a lot of fun when adopting their roles. Every manager is required to manage people and events; and, whatever the scenario, the general principles involved are exactly the same. The degree of benefit derived from this exercise will depend entirely on the extent to which individuals devote their energies to the task of carrying out assigned roles This does not mean that they will be required to display any acting ability – but, rather, that they concentrate on the job in hand.

Fight or Flight?

DevonAir is faced with a number of challenges that are apparent for many organisations in today’s business climate. Opportunities are presented during the day if exploited with a little creative thinking could secure the future of the organisation will participants identify the opportunities? Following is a summary of just a few of the issues facing the organisation

A suspicion that the recent redundancy measures which included flight deck crew and cabin teams have left Devonair with an insufficient number of aircrew to service the summer schedule constraints of the NAA regulations on aircrew duty hours/off-duty breaks, coupled with annual holiday entitlements and possible sickness absences, could throw the proverbial spanner in the works.
A move by the Personnel Director to make (or persuade,) the aircraft captains and first officers agree to become SELF EMPLOYED resulting in. a reduction in PAYE/ National Insurance, and all those recurrent aircrew medicals, renewal of licences, etc.. would become the responsibility of the individual
Confirmation, that a senior stewardess is pregnant and a request to transfer to a position in training and development during the term of her pregnancy
A leaked memo the annual pay review will result in anything but a minimal all round increase
A complaint to an Industrial Tribunal on the grounds of unfair dismissal
A flight grounded in Catawompi containing 166 passengers and crew due to a suspected terrorism attack
Serious allergic reaction on the inbound flight from Istanbul triggered by the practice of spraying mosquito repellent
The Challenge of increasing aircraft utilization particularly the two Dash Seven aircraft The associated costs of aircraft lying idle and the increasing cost of oil
The ever-spiraling costs of servicing and maintaining aircraft, and the impact of the recession .

The experience felt so realistic. The room was transformed into an airline office, phones rang, emails and post were delivered all delivering a new challenge that needed priotitizing. Then a guy in uniform walked in and announced he was from The Civil Aviation Authority and had come to investigate a complaint. It was so authentic. I was Cabin Crew Manager I learned so much about scheduling, negotiating and influencing. Thank You!

ITV Granada

Operation Highflight Competency Areas

Preparing and participating in meetings

Written and verbal communication, Influencing and persuading others Managing disagreements and conflict Collaborating and exchanging ideas.

Collating and analyzing statistical and financial data

Analysing and presenting figures and statistics in a logical manner. Clarifying and summarising information.Problem Solving.

Preparing and producing schedules, timetables and staff rotas

Respecting and applying regulatory authority rules and regulations. Communicating requirements relating to work activities to all relevant people.

Managing telephone calls and correspondence

Managing conflict. Informing and consulting with others. Seeking information to solve problems. Questioning and listening skills.

Organisation and Efficiency

Organizing work to respond to conflicting demands and timescales.

Leading and participation in management meetings

Presenting in a logical and factual manner. Negotiating for limited resources. Establishing and communicating objectives, Influencing others..