Tag: American Airlines

OM in the News: Quality Control and the Boeing 787

American Airlines supervisors check the rudder and inspect the paint on a new 787. The tail has 13 different colors and is tricky to paint, so it gets close inspection

“Imagine you’re buying a $270 million car. You’d want to kick the tires pretty hard. That’s what airlines do with new airplanes,” writes The Wall Street Journal (Aug. 31, 2017). Delivering one widebody airplane is a big deal—each plane has a list price roughly the cost of a high-rise hotel.

Carriers like American Airlines station their own engineers at Boeing factories to watch their flying machines get built and check parts as they arrive. Then they send flight attendants, mechanics and pilots for what are called shakedown inspections.

“The rubber meets the road here,” says an American manager, as he begins checking a brand new Boeing 787. “It’s inspected and it’s inspected and it’s inspected. And yet we still find things.” American is taking delivery of 57 new planes this year.  Boeing does its own testing, but buyers do their own extra inspection–and note an average of 140 items on a plane’s punchlist.

Five flight attendants, a couple of mechanical experts and an American test pilot attack the 285-passenger plane. All the doors and panels are opened for inspection. Flight attendants shake each seat violently, grab the headrest and pull it up and jerk the cord on each entertainment controller. They test power ports, USB ports, audio jacks and the entertainment system. They open all tray tables, turn all lights on and off. They recline each seat with knee-knocking force. They flush all the toilets, blow fake smoke into smoke alarms, make sure all prerecorded emergency messages sound when required.

Inside the cockpit, an American test pilot flies the jet to its limits, making sure alarms sound when he increases air speed or slows the plane down to stall speed. He turns it sharply until “bank angle” warnings sound. Each engine gets shut down and restarted in the air. Every backup and emergency system is put into use to make sure it works.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Why do airlines feel the need to make the quality inspections?
  2. What tools that we see in Chapter 6 could Boeing use to improve quality even further?

OM in the News: American Airlines Returns to “Peak” Scheduling

Shorter connecting times mean runs of up to 1.1 miles in Miami's airport
Shorter connecting times mean runs of up to 1.1 miles in Miami’s airport

“American Airlines is making its Miami hub more hectic—on purpose,” writes The Wall Street Journal (Sept. 11, 2014). Instead of spacing flights evenly throughout the day, the airline just started bunching them together. The change restores an old format of “peak” scheduling, grouping flights into busy flying times followed by lulls when gates are nearly empty. American next year will “re-peak” schedules at its largest hubs in Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth.

Airlines shunned peak schedules at hubs more than a decade ago because they meant higher costs such as more people and equipment, created too many delays and forced passengers to sprint through terminals to make connecting flights. Recently though, the industry has gravitated back to peaks and valleys as a way to fill seats and generate more revenue. “An additional person per flight will make a difference,” said American’s CEO. The company will gain $200 million more a year from re-peaking its schedules at hubs.

But travelers may have even less time to make flight connections or to eat. And airlines, airports and federal agencies are re-evaluating how they manage baggage, cleaning crews and security checkpoints with the new highs and lows in foot traffic. Peak scheduling packs planes better because it creates more possible itineraries, with shorter connection times. In Miami, 42 flights depart between 9 and 10 a.m. Then between 10 and 11 a.m., only a handful are scheduled to take off. The process repeats during the day with 10 “banks” of flights that fill about 45 gates at a time.

There are added costs to re-peaking. American hired 67 more gate agents and 150 baggage handlers and other ground workers. It had to purchase more belt-loaders, dollies and tugs that push planes out from gates. There are other pitfalls to airlines’ clumped schedules. If bad weather hits at the wrong time, diverted flights and missed connections can cause widespread delays.

Classroom discussion questions:

1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach?

2. What other OM ideas could American use to increase efficiency?

Teaching Tip: Using an SPC Chart to Examine American Airlines’ Pilots “Sick Out”

Looking for a current business issue to illustrate statistical process control when you are covering Supplement 6? The Wall Street Journal (Sept.24,2012) notes how “American Airlines continued to rack up high numbers of flight delays and cancellations, blaming a dispute with its pilots union. The union, meanwhile, denied that pilots disrupted flights unnecessarily.”

Percent of Pilots Sick

Can the same set of data be used to make opposite points in an argument?  It’s not that statistics lie, it is more in how we present all of the available data points, as can see in this timely example regarding the alleged “sick out” of American Airlines pilots. Here is a 13 month “snapshot” of percent of pilots out sick at American that you can use in class:  9/18/11, 4.9% ; 10/18/11, 9.5% ; 11/18/11, 5.0% ; 12/18/11, 6.5%, ; 1/18/12, 5.4% ; 2/18/12 , 6.6% ; 3/18/12, 6.6% ; 4/18/12, 6.0% ; 5/18/12, 7.0% ; 6/18/12, 7.4%; 7/18/12, 6.1%; 8/18/12, 6.6%; and 9/18/12, 7.5%. (The number of pilots dropped a few percent during this period in American’s financial struggles, from a high of 7,840 to a current 7,563.)

“By my calculations,” writes a Dallas Morning News(Sept. 20, 2012) reporter, “the number of pilots on sick leave was 45.7% higher on Sept. 18, 2012, than on Sept. 18, 2011, up 177 pilots. That seems like an increase in sick leave usage”. (See the bar chart graph above used to make this point).  American’s spokesman adds that sick leave “has been up more than 20 percent year over year and has been elevated for months.”

13 Month SPC Chart

Counters the union: “Contrary to claims by management, we have confirmed that pilot sick rates have not deviated from historical norms”. (Here we see the SPC p-chart showing percent of sick days being within p-chart control limits).

What happens to the p-chart if the 1st two months last year are excluded? Ask your students to recompute the control limits and draw conclusions.

OM in the News: How to Get Passengers to Board the Plane Faster

In Chapter 15, we discuss Southwest’s strategic advantage in being able to turn around its planes faster than competitors. Part of that process means getting passengers on board and ready to go as quickly as possible. Yet, as The Wall Street Journal (July 21,2011) points out, “Boarding an airline can be a bit like the after-Christmas sale at Wal-Mart.  Passengers jockey to get better positions in line. The aisles become clogged with travellers stuffing luggage the size of a 4th-grader into overhead bins”. To address the problem at American, that airline just finished a 2-year study to try to speed up its boarding.

The result: AA rolled out a new strategy–randomized boarding. Travellers without elite status now get assigned randomly to boarding groups instead of filing onto planes from back to front. American says the new system can shave 3-4 minutes off the average 20-25 minutes. And every minute cut saves the airline $30/flight.

After first observing 1,000’s of arrivals and departures to see where the process slowed down, American found that one time factor was baggage–more bags are being carried on to avoid fees. “Back-to-front” slowed because only 2 people on average got to their seats at a time, while everyone else standing and waiting filled bins at the front of the plane —and was the most time-consuming. ( Alaska Airlines, US Airways and Continental all use “back-to-front”, by the way).

Computer simulations revealed that “window-middle-aisle” (used by United Airlines and Delta) –meaning boarding passengers in window seats 1st, followed by middle  and then aisle–was faster.  But randomized boarding worked even better. Multiple passengers got to their seats at the same time. Bins filled more evenly. The process reduced the number of bags that needed to be checked at the gate by 20% because more overhead space was available. And, the system proved calmer when tested on real flights.

Discussion questions

1. Why do the airlines use such diverse boarding systems?

2. Why does Southwest, which uses a “1st-to-check-in” boarding system, turn its planes around faster than other airlines?