Operational Process Improvements

British Airways, BAA, Emirates & US Airways

To improve existing over-long aircraft turnaround times that were causing: poor punctuality; stand allocation instability; and preventing terminals realising their full potential.

Business Consultancy A generic turnaround process was broken into steps and a PERT chart developed  to identify dependencies, inter-relationships and criticality of sub processes. Actual turnarounds were observed and the findings were compared to the generic process and activity chart together with international benchmarks. Areas for improvement were identified and facilitated creative workshops, attended by relevant stakeholders, achieved buy-in to agreed operational improvements.

Improvements were made to the forward stand allocation system, management of ground support equipment, improvement of activities on the critical path and lead-in planning to achieve continued turnaround reductions of up to 30%.