Today I changed my maintenance provider and didn't fully appreciate the importance of 'efficiency' as a criterion- it's caused havoc on my schedules. With some fiddling, I've been able to fix it so most of my aircraft are back above a ratio of 100%.
However a smaller sub-fleet of planes (about 10-11 years old) have gone from ratios of around 120% to 80-89%. For example, one aircraft is now at 83% with the same daily schedule making its final arrival at 23:08 and not departing again until 5:22. I don't have many of these aircraft, so don't have much flexibility to juggle schedules around like the others, and they are all on much the same sort of schedule. I'd thought having at around 5 hours was enough security!
If the ratio is, for example, 83%, am I right in thinking that each night only 83% of the work will be completed, so eventually the condition will gradually fall?
Any advice, or should I just hang on for two weeks until I can undo the experiment?
You won't be able to hang on from a maintenance side. The planes will run out of maintenance long before the two weeks are up. Once that happens, your planes will be at different airports, waiting for maintenance and more flights will get cancelled because of it.
If you have the money for this, I would handle it this way:
* Immediately "Lock" your schedule. I believe (not tested, but think) this will lock the schedule but make it un-activated.
* Cancel all the flights that have very few passengers, usually at the end of the flights list on each aircraft.
When the two weeks is up, switch back, activate the schedules (with three day delay), and transfer your planes accordingly.
Just tested - using the "lock schedule" will set the schedule as "un-activated" and allow you to hold onto the flights and slots until you can get your maintenance provider back.
I have a bit of a cash reserve, so I'm going to try getting another aircraft to ease some of the stress of the sub-fleet for 2 weeks, and will probably also have to be fairly liberal with cancellations. Gah!
Just tested - using the "lock schedule" will set the schedule as "un-activated" and allow you to hold onto the flights and slots until you can get your maintenance provider back.
Why locking the schedule at all?
It should work if you simply cancel a pair of flights all couple of days the way you described for each affected airframe.
It should work if you simply cancel a pair of flights all couple of days the way you described for each affected airframe.
Cancelling the flights is possible, but you would be charged for anyone that booked on that flight. Depending on cash situation, that can cause a big problem. Also, if you have the schedule still activated, and can't be back often enough to cancel flights as soon as they are entered onto the flight schedule, you could end up with more bookings as flight demand calculations take place. It can get expensive, especially if it's a young or struggling airline.
EDIT: Ah, I see what you mean. I don't know if that's how it works. I think I read somewhere/sometime that maintenance only happens during scheduled maintenance time. The only time it gains when it's not scheduled is from the time a lease/buy order has been signed to the point it takes its first flight. I could be easily wrong about this, but I do remember something like this being confirmed at some point in the past.
You can cancel a flight when it has 0 bookings without paying anything …… or at least cancel 3 days ahead when there is minimum booking …. at least you will have income and avoid big losses ….
maintenance takes place, whenever an aircraft has 2 hours or more between "ready for departure" and an actual departure - no matter the reason.
otherwise, after a forced break due to condition, an aircraft would have to wait for a scheduled maintenance window rather than just the next time it is actually at the correct airport. this has been tested by me many times. I actually operate two or three aircrafts that are at a maintenance ratio of 99 or 98%. Those have a flight cancellation every now and then due to condition but I believe it to still be more profitable than taking out an entire rotation and ending up at some 200%.
Thanks everyone. I think with some strategic cancellations I should be able to manage two weeks until I can undo this horrible, horrible experiment gone wrong.
Just out of curiosity, you switched the provider from whom to whom?
To follow up from your original query when the initial panic about the switch was still in place, although I've taken a real hit to how much schedule a frame can bear, after a week on Solaire, despite adding aircraft to my fleet, my maintenance bill has reduced by about a third. So, no small change. Since there's still a week before I can switch back to trusty reliable Amethyst, I'm going to think over whether it's really worth it, since I work in hub banks anyway so have fairly low utilisation.
But remember one thing ... you have been flying less flights this week because of schedule conflicts (at least that is what I understand). If you flew less flights, having lower maintenance cost is logical, because maintenance is charged on per-flight basis, the more flights you have the more you pay in maintenance and the fewer flights you have the less you pay.
In other words, if you have one plane and it flies A-B, B-A, and another plane that flies A-B, B-A, A-B, B-A, you will pay twice the amount on maintenance on the second plane compared to what you would pay on the first plane.
You can roughly estimate how much more/less/same flying you do by comparing last week's and week before last's (or if you are nearing the week end closing, the current week's and last week's) total airport handling fees, aircraft handling fees and air traffic control fees.While this is not a precise reference, there is a strong correlation. So if the navigation/airport etc. fees have been reduced by 20% (because of less flying) and your maintenance has been reduced by 30%, then you are actually really saving only 10% on maintenance.