Methodology & Sources

1. Why a structured diagnostic?

Airline underperformance is rarely caused by a single failure. It emerges from the interaction of safety culture, schedule reliability, fleet economics, cost discipline and commercial execution. A structured, weighted diagnostic surfaces which combination of gaps is holding an operator back — before a consulting engagement, not after weeks of discovery. The Scorecard is the same instrument JK uses to open client engagements, published here in self-service form.

2. The 8 domains and their weights

Weights reflect each domain's typical influence on an airline's regulatory standing, cash generation and resilience. They were calibrated from JK's engagement history with African and Middle-East carriers and cross-checked against the priorities embedded in ICAO, IATA and lessor due-diligence frameworks.

3. How scoring works

• Each domain has 5 questions; each answer maps to a maturity level from 0 (absent/ad-hoc) to 4 (optimised/industry-leading).
• A domain score is the average of its 5 answers, expressed as a percentage of the maximum.
• The Health Index is the weighted sum of the 8 domain percentages using the weights above.
• Answer options are written as observable descriptors ("we have X, reviewed at Y cadence") rather than self-ratings, to reduce optimism bias.

4. Interpretation bands

0–44 · Turnaround required 45–64 · Material gaps to close 65–79 · Competitive, with upside 80–100 · Best-in-class trajectory

The report also flags your three widest domain gaps and prescribes the matching JK toolboxes and engagement phases, so the output is a prioritised action shortlist rather than a raw number.

5. Frameworks and sources we draw on

• ICAO Annex 19 & Doc 9859 (SMM) — safety management maturity descriptors.
• IATA IOSA standards and IATA economics briefings — operational and cost benchmarks.
• ACI / IATA on-time performance conventions — reliability definitions (OTP-15, completion factor).
• Standard airline unit-economics practice — CASK/RASK framing used in the calculator tools.
• JK engagement data — anonymised patterns from diagnostics run with carriers in Africa and the Middle East.

The oldest industry figure cited across the toolkit dates from —; some are more current. Drawn from the sources named inline against each figure. We refresh these as new reports are published, and each figure in the report names its own source.

6. What is checked, and how you can tell

The section above says where the figures come from. This one says what stops them quietly ceasing to be true. The checks below run against every build, and the figures shown are published only from a run in which all of them passed — including the check that these numbers describe that run, so the table cannot overstate itself.

What this does not say. There is no "last verified" date here, deliberately: a date written into a file is stale the moment anything else changes. What the build guarantees is that these figures describe the version of the site you are reading. The list covers the browser-driven suites; syntax, data-model and markup checks run separately and are not counted in it.

7. Limitations — read this

8. Data handling

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