Process Mining for resilient airport operations: A case study of Munich Airport's turnaround process

The aviation industry has faced significant challenges in recent years, including a punctuality crisis in 2018/19 and the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on operations since March 2020. Hence, the industry seeks innovative ways to optimize its operations and become more resilient. Process Mining (PM) has proven valuable in various settings and industries by analyzing event-log data extracted from existing information systems. As airports play a critical role within the aviation network, we expand on a case study-based methodology and employ PM techniques to analyze data generated within the airport collaborative decision-making (ACDM) framework for the turnaround process at Munich Airport. We show that applying PM enhances operational transparency, reveals performance differences between ground-handling corporations and airlines, and identifies data quality problems with the implemented ACDM framework. Additionally, we develop a conceptual framework demonstrating the positive influence of PM on airport resilience. Our study contributes to the aviation literature and resilience theory by showcasing the potential of PM for analyzing and optimizing operational airport processes. Since the ACDM framework is widely used in Europe, researchers and practitioners can apply our approach to improve turnaround processes at other European airports.