Airline Carrier

I: Your client is a low-cost airline carrier and has suddenly seen an increase in TAT by 3 times. They are looking to you to find out how they can reduce the same.

C: Thank you for the question. I would like to understand what TAT is before I assimilate the question.

I: Sure, TAT is Turnaround Time, and it is the amount of time it takes an aircraft to land and take off again.

C: I’d like to know how much this time has increased by and what it was earlier.

I: It has increased from 15 to 30 mins.

C: Which airport was this at?

I: Good question. Mumbai.

C: Alright, so I’d like to do a journey mapping of the aircraft once it lands.

Lands – Moves to space where it gets read for take off.

C: Within that time, following activities take place – deboarding – baggage removal – cleaning – restocking – refueling – miscellaneous servicing if required – staff onboarding – passenger onboarding

I: that is very comprehensive. Let’s start at deboarding. We have seen a 5-minute increase there.

C: Oh, so that’s a third of our time. I would like to understand the reasons for this increase.

I: Sure. What do you think could be the reasons?

C: These could be due to two factors, either change in the setting of the aircraft or facilities for deplaning, or passenger related factors.

I: What do you mean by passenger related factors.

C: I was thinking either along the lines of passengers not wanting to crowd the aisles especially considering COVID-19 regulations.

I: Yes, this has caused an increase in the time to de-plane.

C: Alright, so now I would like to find out where the rest of the delay is coming from. Moving on to baggage removal, are we seeing a slowdown there?

I:Well, we have paid for a spot for our airline close to the runway. And this reduced our TAT by 10 mins. Yet we are still delayed by 15 minutes. Baggage has been taking longer to transport.

C: I would like to know how it has changed from before.

As I understand, there must be some automated baggage carts on which the luggage is first transferred to the belts.

I: Yes, these carts are available where we were initially parked, and they take much longer to reach us.

C: Alright, how much of the time has been increased due to this.

I: 5 minutes.

C: Okay, so there is another 5 minutes that we are yet to account for.

I: Yes.

C: Moving to fuel, are the tankers also placed similarly like the luggage carts and have a new travel time now?

I: Yes exactly. This has added another 5 minutes. What are your recommendations?

C: I’d like to look at two options.

One would be to move back to the original site. Although we would still see a 5-minute delay there due to passenger related reasons, we will be able to save on the additional cost of moving to a site closer to the runway.

The second would be to consider using radar technology to communicate with ground staff to ready the tankers and carts before the plane lands. Keeping it ready in time and possibly investing in larger and more such vehicles to cut time keeping in mind a cost benefit analysis of doing this same.

I: Great, thank you. We can close the case here.