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Aviation History
1991
1991 - 1253.PDF
recruitment is probably the tightest restraint on ANA's rate of expansion. The airline needs 100 pilots a year. At the moment it carries out its ab initio training at Lufthansa's Phoenix, Arizona, training centre, with advanced training in Germany. During FY1990/1 it increased the numbers in training by 50%. Some foreign flight engineers are being taken on, but only temporarily. Engineering students are not difficult to recruit, says senior vice-president engineer ing and maintenance Hideo Aoki, because the airline job is seen as attractive. "Our quality and reliability are high, but so are our costs. We are trying to go for labour- saving devices and automation." Every year the number of new mainte nance employees is strictly controlled. ANA is developing software for task automation and for automatic test equipment. "The engineering overhaul shop has de veloped an automatic balancing system for [equipment including] compressors," says Aoki. "It makes tests much quicker and lowers the labour requirement." ANA does line maintenance for some overseas carriers and work to C-check level for Taiwan's EVA Airways on its leased 767s. EVA has employed ANA as a consult ant in developing its own maintenance capacity. A joint venture into third-party maintenance with EVA is possible. There are no signs of restraint in ANA's aircraft acquisition programme. The five- year 1990-5 plan calls for about 53 new aircraft to be commissioned, with 38 to be retired, and puts the March 1995 fleet at 118 aircraft, 15 more than it was in March last year. Kawase puts the annual sum needed for re-equipment at ¥200 billion "for several years". The airline wanted to go for equity financing, but the market collapse last year meant that they have had to go for bank Left: AH Nippon's high- tech culture — above is the Boeing 777, below, the Airbus A340 loans and leasing. Currently, out of 107 aircraft only two 747- 200s are leased, but Kawase says the air line is seriously considering leasing the international- model 747-400s. "ANA's stock is cur rently believed to be undervalued," says Kawase. "It should re cover, and when it does we must go to the market for more finance." The airline has or dered 43 Boeing 747- 400s, 26 767-300s, 25 777s, 20 Airbus Industrie A320s and ten A340s. ANA claims it is characteristic to go for state-of-the-art equipment: "We have a culture in our company to select high technology which delivers a benefit to our passengers," says Katsuhiko Nakazawa, senior manager in the aircraft purchasing section. "We selected the Viscount when it was the most ad- van ced aircraft, and JAL chose the DC-4 and DC-6. We chose the 727-100 and the TriStar when they were very new." CULTURALLY DIFFERENT The impression is that, in the totally regu lated Japanese air-transport environment which existed until recently, equipment choice was one of the few ways in which ANA could show its personality. "We are culturally completely different from JAL," says purchasing director Hachiro Suzuki. "There are no political pressures [forcing type choice]." ANA's A320 choice was made at the time when the International Aero Engines 2500 ANA International route network North America Washington DC Los Angeles New York The Japanese domestic passenger market 1989 Japan Air Services (formerly Tao Domestic) South West Airlines (JAL subsidiary) Air Nippon (ANA subsidiary) 5 Reed Business Publishing Group HMMM power unit was having development trouble and Lufthansa had just switched its engine order to the CFM56: "If the timing had been different we might have gone for the IAE 2500," says Nakazawa. The A320s will replace ANA's 737-200s, with six retired this year and redeployed to subsidiary ANK. ANK says it is also in the market for 100-seater jets and 70- to 80-seater turboprops. The latter would re place its old YS-11 twin turboprops, which are expected to operate until about 1995. Out of the 43 747-400s, about six will be -400Ds, which have no winglets and will be used for domestic services, as are the 17 747SRs now. Of the 11 TriStars currently in the fleet, only three will remain by March 1995, with 767-300s taking most of their work. The 777 was chosen because it promises to be better than the A330 for domestic and other short-range services, according to Suzuki. The entire plan depends more than any thing else on Tokyo Narita's development. If completion of the new terminal extends beyond 1993, ANA's plans all shift back wards according to the delay. Bargaining with environmentalists and farmer/land owners over space for building the "B" runway — Narita's parallel runway — puts the estimate for completion of the runway somewhere between three and five years from now. Vice-president corporate planning Kenzo Yoshikawa says: "If Narita is delayed it will be a loss for the Japanese economy as a whole. I say this because load factors are well over 70%, which means flights are often full at the advanced booking stage, so business travel is harmed." Nagoya and Fukuoka airports are also getting close to saturation in terms of apron space and car parking. Yoshikawa says the Japanese public needs to understand this and insist that the problem is solved. • FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 15 - 21 May, 1991
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