Think about reality of issues related to unscheduled maintenance as one of the most costly, obvious, yet not fully visible reasons behind operational disruptions. What often remains unseen is the unintended collateral damage created by growth strategies designed to impress unsavvy investors, while losses in the core airline business remain masked by retail or other non-aviation revenues. The impact inevitably seeps into organisational culture.
As for the maintenance realities, they keep being shaped by strategies that prioritise fleet and network expansion, often without understanding their side effects including operational disruptons and their impact on costs, passenger experience and ultimately revenue. This signals a disconnect from operational reality that fuels growing losses.
The problem is aggravated by delay reporting practices that force deeply interrelated causes into one-dimensional IATA formats, where nearly half of disruption reasons are labelled “reactionary,” detached from their multiple systemic origins. This prevents those determined to make better decisions from doing so.
Getting out
of this industrial trap can start small:
Select just a few initial maintenance-related causes of disruptions.
Scan how far they ripple across the network.
Observe how long the effects last.
Measure the schedule adjustments required to bring aircraft back on track.
And most importantly, capture the full cost and revenue impact, including the consequences on passenger experience
Relational Action Mapping is a next step followed by Progress Monitoring.
In a wider context, this requires leadership conscious of complexity and of the airline’s capabilities needed to overcome it. It points to the need for a new integrative role, one that channels decisions by connecting data, people, and processes near real time.
The process can be introduced within months without large investments. Consider it as a
first step toward more coherent, systemic decision-making. It comes from my experience.
