Operations and fuel assessment

A North American carrier with a mixed fleet of 737-400 and 737-800 aircraft had communications, processes, and organizational alignment issues that led to elevated fuel use, repeat operational disruptions, and poor recovery time. There was a lack of clarity on the company's strategic direction to support departmental planning and priorities.

In addition, their mixed fleet drove inefficiencies and schedule reliability challenges. We saw that there were other challenges, including:

• Lack of fuel management and contract dispatch oversight
• Communication gaps between departments that lead to inefficient day-to-day operations and ineffective management of unexpected events
• A need for standard operating procedures to fully optimize operations

We identified the annual costs of delays:

• $3.1M in crew delays
• $5.5M in technical delays
• $1.9M in passenger services and ramp delays
• 98.4% TDR (98.3% 400s, 98.7% 800s)
• 62% of flights landed with >3500kg of fuel
• Opportunity to decrease arrival fuel

In partnership with the organization, we performed a comprehensive, onsite review of airline operations, including:

• Evaluated operational policies and procedures
• Surveyed airline operations control and fuel planning
• Interviewed dispatch, aircrew, and management staff
• Observed aircraft turns and provisioning
• Observed in-flight aircrew procedures
• Performed a policy and procedure gap analysis

Through this review and audit, our team exposed and quantified the most significant systemic sources of disruption of the airlines' operations using:

• Root-cause delay tracing algorithm
• Airline delay benchmarking
• Boeing patented delay cost calculation
• Block time and aircraft turn time analyses