Idling 10% of the fleet not standard industry practice to protect against an industry average 2% flight cancellation rate (1). How many other airlines of comparable size do this?
(1) all causes combined - including the ones where a spare aircraft is useless, e.g. bad weather prevents landing at destination.
oldblueeyes wrote: ↑12 Sep 2024, 18:23First of all , ongoing costs - we speak about used A330, so the average dry lease rate would be like 300k per month? -> you can easily calculate that this costs equalys the opportunity ocst of 1 lost rotation per month, if you count passanger claims, hotel, rerouting via other airlines etc.
Opportunity cost is the value of the next best alternative to the allocation of an asset. In your scenario, the opportunity cost is the millions of € in annual revenue that could be earned flying passengers instead of idling 10% of the fleet on any given day. For the cost savings from a hot spare to exceed the opportunity cost of the spare, the reliability must be far worse than the 2% industry average.
Especially when you consider that a spare in BRU may not be helpful if the cancellation is at an outstation.
If Brussels indeed plans to have a spare aircraft ready to go on all/most days (remember this is still not confirmed), this points to a low dispatch rate. So back to my original question,what are they doing wrong?
oldblueeyes wrote: ↑12 Sep 2024, 18:23Last but not least, it is a mitigation of risk - SN does not fly destinations where the next maintenace hangar is just at the other end of the airport - and the more "exoti" the destination, the higher the risk of delays or unforseen technical issues without quick maintenance options.
Therein lies the beginning of an answer. When Brussels needs a spare part not in inventory in BRU, there are multiple options nearby where it could be sourced from, and a Satair store in HAM. If that part is not available locally in Africa, the nearest Satair store is in DXB. That is an exponentially larger problem when most of your long-haul fleet is in Africa for a large part of the day. Maybe Brussels is unlucky, or maybe they need more parts in more places, or earlier preventative parts replacements - which costs more.
oldblueeyes wrote: ↑12 Sep 2024, 18:23Secondlly, you have to look at the fleet utilisation rate - knwojg that you have certainbackup capacity available, you can squeeze more sectors or use available spare capacity to to find solutions at tight turnarounds - "spare" flies out and incoming aircraft becomes "spare" at the risk of a delay for cleaning etc.
That is broadly the concept of a rolling spare, but it is applicable only when airlines have multiple waves of the type per day. The rolling spare concept does not work when all aircraft arrive and depart at around the same times.
fcw wrote: ↑12 Sep 2024, 08:47Aircraft do break down and do have incidents, you don’t seem to understand nor accept this.
Thanks for the laugh.
