I was going over my airline's financial records of the past week, trying to figure out why my profit increase was down a bunch. I've been getting an increase of about $6-$7 million of profit per week. This last week, the profit only increased by $1 million.
Going through my numbers, this is where I found the big discrepancy:
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My maintenance costs jumped nearly 300% in one week. I'd like to know what the heck I did to make that happen. First, here's some information regarding the maintenance.
- I have exactly three maintenance categories (Embraer, 737, and 787).
- I did get a lot of planes in the past couple of weeks. I'd have to check on the amount, however my revenue per flight actually increased, so in general, the bottom-line profit should go up.
- I did switch maintenance providers a while ago, and the price should have increased, as I went from 'poor' price to 'lousy'. I just don't think it's supposed to be a three-fold increase.
If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. I'm unsure what has happened.
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I did get a lot of planes in the past couple of weeks. I’d have to check on the amount, however my revenue per flight actually increased, so in general, the bottom-line profit should go up.
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I did switch maintenance providers a while ago, and the price should have increased, as I went from ‘poor’ price to ‘lousy’. I just don’t think it’s supposed to be a three-fold increase.
I can´t explain it because of lack of time during my break but I experienced such increases too due to several factors including a major expansion of the fleet and/or change of the provider. The change of a provider was the first and last experiment for me due to very negative effects.
As I'm thinking it over, I think it's probably a combination of those two. I didn't count how many planes I got in the past fiscal week, but I think it was close to 30 or 35. That, combined with a switch to more expensive maintenance probably did it. But cheese and rice that's a big jump in price for maintenance. Lousy really is lousy.
Caithes, you are on Aspern so you run 100% new A/C. I suggest you do this:
Go to ATE, put in a route, multiply by per-week flights shown, you will get maintenance cost for the plane. This assumes 100.1% maintenance ratio. Any higher ratio, cost should be lower.
Multiply by the number of planes, and you get you estimated weekly maintenance cost.
Have you changed to Afrikcan Maintenance? My experience is that it is about 10% higher than default provider.
Also, you can do some basic check yourself. Check the booked flights for the maintenance cost under costing detail. Then run ATE for that route and see maintenance cost and compare them. They should be virtually the same. As maintenance cost is calculated on per-flight basis, it really does not matter if you fly one or ten times daily to that destination. And maintenance cost in flight costing screen and in ATE should be roughly equal (I find about 3-4 AS$ difference) per flight. Then, briefly open another account on other server, and use ATE for checking maintenance costs on the same route you checked your flights. You should see a slight difference, of about 10% between "average" and :lousy" price. At least that is my experience.
I had a similar situation. One of my ERJs would run me about 4-5k a week in maintenance. This week, it came in at 24000!!! Nothing has changed other than 2 new routes added, and the ratio went from 180 to 160. How can maintenance expense be up 6x over a week ago??
It sounds like what happened to me. Did you change your maintenance provider? That's the only thing I did that really would have effected my whole fleet.
It sounds like what happened to me. Did you change your maintenance provider? That's the only thing I did that really would have effected my whole fleet.
I did about a month ago, but every other aircraft has had 'normal' maintenance expenses.
I did about a month ago, but every other aircraft has had 'normal' maintenance expenses.
How did you check the maintenance expenses. Did you go flight by flight on that aircraft? If you had expense X$ on aircraft A on route R1 to R2, and expense Y$ on aircraft B on the same route R1 to R2, and given the same aircraft age, have you notified support of the bug? It would have been useful to take screenshots in case like this.
Anyway I wrote to support a few days back, because on some planes the "expected maintenance cost" was a bit different than the bank account-charged maintenance cost, a difference of 1 to 10%. The higher the "no-maintenance block" the higher the difference in actual maintenance vs projected maintenance cost. If I had 2 maintenance blocks, the maintenance cost difference was about 1 to 2%. If I had only one maintenance block, there the difference between projected and actual maintenance cost jumped to about 10%.
Taking this information and applying to caithes' case, changing a maintenance provider from average price to lousy is about 10% maintenance cost difference. Even taking everything into consideration, your maintenance cost should not have jumped more than 15% to 20% maximum as the worst case scenario. 300% jump is just extremely too much. Now, look on your fuel cost, that is the best indication of how much more you are flying (planes are charged maintenance only when they are flying and the less they fly the less they are charged, and the more they fly the more they are charged for maintenance). Check the fuel cost this period vs last period, and see how much more (%-wise) you are flying. That will be your multiplying factor for last period's maintenance cost. Then add 20% on top of it. If it is still substantially more than what you were charged in maintenance, I would write AS support about it.
Please keep us informed.
I had a 16% jump in my fuel prices (from just about $34 million to right at $39.5 million). My maintenance costs jumped 158%.
I had a 16% jump in my fuel prices (from just about $34 million to right at $39.5 million). My maintenance costs jumped 158%.
There certainly is something wrong with that. Have you writtent to AS support?
Hm. Stranger still, the maintenance costs for this week are approaching last week's (currently at $11.16 million, or 96.6% of last week's costs) and the fuel cost is still more than $6 million cheaper, or at 84.6%. This can really only be explained by the changing of maintenance providers.
I think, when I can, I'm going to switch back. It might make me have to do a little route finagling, but I am pretty sure I can pull it off.
Who was your original maintenance provider and who is your current one?
Now that is really strange. Avia has price "poor", African has "lousy". Amethyst (the default) has "average". Going from Average to Lousy is about 10% difference. Going from Poor to Lousy should not be even that much ...
Can you PM me this info:
- couple of flights from the "high maintenance" aircraft, information from Flight Costing tool
Eg. flt A to B, maintenance $XYZ. Aircraft type.
I will check maintenance cost on such route with both Avia, African and Amethyst.
I will when I get a few to do that.
Speaking of maintenance, I switched from Helvetic to African a couple of weeks ago and my maintenance jumped from ~17m to ~29m...