Case study - The turnaround time of an aircraft: a competitive weapon for an airline company

Abstract

Airline turnaround time is defined as the time required to unload an airplane after its arrival at the gate and to prepare it for departure again. In today’s era of exorbitant airport charges and rising fuel charges levied across the world, it becomes important for airline companies to come out with ways to cut back cost. Since there is very little control over fuel costs, one of the ways airline companies can cut back cost without compromising quality is by reducing Turnaround Time. In order to cut costs and increase performance, airlines work constantly on reducing turnaround time as these smaller and larger adaptations can be seen as important process innovations, and they are crucial for competitiveness. In the absence of such measures, some companies find themselves in situations wherein they end up with very low profits or very high losses. Airline Turnaround Time has hence become a very important and key parameter in determining the profitability of an airline company. Such situations can lead to a lot of undesirable consequences, as it has a direct impact on the survival of the organization due to a series of payment crisis one after another. This case study tries to explain the application of process of ongoing improvement, the basic approach of Theory of Constraint to improve turnaround time.