Tag: planes

OM in the News: Reliabilty and Maintenance Secrets of the Airlines

“Airlines are pouring lots of time and money into understanding fleet reliability,” reports The Wall Street Journal (Oct. 12, 2017). Delta put together a team of mechanics, engineers and data geeks to find ways to make specific types of planes less prone to breakdowns. American has renewed efforts to schedule flights so each type of plane performs better.

“It’s not necessarily the airplane itself. It’s how we’re operating it,” says American’s VP. If no planes are reserved as spares, fleets become less reliable. Small fleets spread out among multiple hub airports often suffer higher cancellation rates because there aren’t opportunities to swap planes. Time scheduled for routine maintenance can get crimped if the planes get to mechanics late day after day. In 2016 American had 6 different kinds of wide-body jets flying international trips from Chicago. Reliability suffered. When glitches hit, the airline had little ability to swap planes.

Summer reliability is critical for airlines. Among the worst-performing planes were United 747s, which arrived on-time an average 63% of flights during the past 2 summers. United says it has worked the last several years on improving the reliability of the wide-bodies to achieve better on-time performance. Wide-body cancellations are down 60% since 2014.

Delta’s technical data team can not only predict which parts are liable to break, but also redesign some parts to make them more reliable and add monitors to track the health of parts on older jets. Suspect parts get replaced proactively ahead of manufacturers’ recommended replacement schedules, dramatically cutting cancellations. In 2010, Delta had 5,600 flights canceled by maintenance problems. Last year breakdowns caused only 303 cancellations, and the airline has suffered only 70 so far in 2017. Delta also loads seven 40-foot trailers each summer and sends mechanics out with the equipment to small cities to create temporary maintenance bases for specific types of planes. Last summer they were positioned in 7 spoke cities to do preventive maintenance on planes parked overnight there.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Why do reliability figures differ dramatically among airlines and plane models?
  2. What is the “secret” to picking an on-time flight?

OM in the News: Airlines and the Capacity Issue

Because of my early career experience in the aerospace industry (design team for McDonnell Douglas’ DC-10, then the engine for that jet at GE), I have always followed the airline industry closely. Capacity issues have haunted airlines for 6 decades now, going back all the way to 1942, when demand plummeted during that recession. Buying planes is a long term decision, but difficulties after 9-11 and during our current trying times created dramatic drops in demand for seats. This is a great classroom example when you are teaching Capacity in Supp.7.

How do airlines respond? As today’s New York Times reports, airlines trim capacity by grounding planes, reducing the number of flights between cities, and flying smaller planes. At the nation’s largest parking lot near the California Mojave Desert, some 200 aircraft of all sizes (from A320s to 747s) sit tip to wing tip. The dry air keeps the planes from rust and corrosion. Students will enjoy the photo in Supp. 7 showing this image.

The cost, up to $60,000 per month per plane. But the 7% cut in capacity last year  helped raise ticket prices modestly.  Airlines now fly at 80%  of seat capacity, a full 10% higher than their traditional measure.

With the mergers of Delta with Northwest, United with Continental,  Midwest with Frontier, and Southwest with AirTran, there is little growth in demand for more jets forecast in the US. Only 38 wide body planes are on order for delivery in this country by 2015. By contrast, 627 are going to be delivered to foreign carriers during that same 5 year period.

Discussion questions:

1. Why are airlines willing to spend enormous sums to park their planes in the desert?

2. Who can benefit from airline overcapacity?

3. The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner has run into such bad supply chain problems (Ch.11) that it is now 2 years late. How does this impact the airlines that ordered them?