FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1981
1981 - 0018.PDF
16 FLIGHT International, 3 January 1981 ¥%>«&" L I WE w\ W**i -WSi Airline efficiency By J. M. RAMSDEN EVERYBODY recognises efficiency but nobody can define it. After safety, efficiency is every airline man agement's priority; and few subjects touch more nerve-ends, especially in the unions. What is airline efficiency? There is the efficiency of its commercial and political judgement; the efficiency with which it burns fuel, treats its passen gers, maximises load factor, judges markets, and the efficiency with which it deals with staff, unions, manufac turers, ministers and the press. All this sort of efficiency contributes to profitability, but it cannot be measured. We can, however, try to measure operating efficiency, which most reasonable people would define as high productivity of staff and equip ment. It is with this sort of efficiency, and this alone, that the present study is concerned. Operating efficiency is—or should be —independent of the different objec tives of one air transport nation com pared with another. Objectives differ widely, ranging from that of the small new nation to subsidise its airline as the highest symbol of national status to the American objective of a de regulated, competitive private-enter prise airline industry responsible to its customers. These wide differences in objective make profitability alone an unsuitable measure of efficiency. If an airline makes a profit there is a strong pre sumption that it is efficient; but it does not follow as night the day. An airline of low operating efficiency can be profitable if it enjoys a monopoly or pooling agreements which allow high revenue rates and load factors. To measure airline operating effi ciency a number of criteria are avail able, each of which has to be carefully qualified. Even when this is done, and the qualifications are clearly under stood, there is always prejudice against, comparisons between the effi ciency of one airline and another. One airline will readily find a million reasons why it is different from others. While there is less wrong with pre judice than with too credulous an ac ceptance of statistics, operating effi ciency provides the best measure of how good a job an airline is really doing; and statistics, if properly handled, can get somewhere near the truth. The greater the number of oper ating efficiency criteria examined the nearer can the truth be approached. Eight different measures have been chosen for this study of a dozen major European and American airlines, and Japan Air Lines. Any one criterion can in itself be misleading but eight taken as a whole provide a pretty fair separation of the goodies from the baddies, especially as some of the measures are chosen to compensate for the limitations of others. Since it could be misleading to take one year's results, the 1978 record for each airline has been checked against that of 1977 and adjusted for discrep ancies. To obtain exactly comparable statistics, the source of all data has been the latest available (1978 and 1977) statistics of traffic, finances, fleets and personnel as compiled and published by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (Icao). The data in this study have been returned by the airlines in accordance with the requirements of Icao's standard re porting forms, and they should be comparable. Departures per aircraft: Short-haul airlines operate more flights with a given fleet, and so this measure tends to favour the short-haulers. One- Elevens in US domestic operation are claimed to have averaged 11 flights a day for 15 years. As a measure of how hard an airline uses its capital equipment, flights per aircraft com plement and in some ways compete with hourly utilisation. Long-haul 747s slipping smoothly through the sky for 15hr at a time do not need the main tenance required by the airframes and engines of the sooty shuttlers one sees at the domestic terminals. Top of the charts is Delta, with SAS and Lufthansa outstanding among the Europeans and indeed among all those examined. The usual disparity be tween the European and American groups is not here particularly marked. Hourly utilisation remains the con ventional measure of how hard an air- 3,000n 2,000- 1,000- 0. Departures per aircraft , , , [—1 | 1 _ f—| _ 15^ 10- | 1 , , | 1 _ 5- 0- Departures employee ^_^ J i I u —I I—I u 500-, 400- 300- 200- 100- 0. Capacity tonne-km(x1,000m)per employe© D BA BCalSASAlit Luft AF Delta NW PAA TWA UAL JAL BA BCal SAS Alit Luft AF Delta NW PAA TWA UAL JAL BA BCalSASAlit Luft AF Delta NW PAA TWA UAL JAL
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
