Inspired by the recent totalling of that British Airways 777 at London-Heathrow, I’m curious as to how airlines deal with the loss of an aircraft such as that.
I presume that the planes are insured (or perhaps larger airlines even self-insure), but I also know that modern airlines are very intensively scheduled. I presume that aircraft had been scheduled to fly many, many, more hours. including probably another flight or two later that day.
So, how do airlines deal with the sudden loss of an aircraft, even if it’s for a more minor mechanical problem that only takes it out of service for several days? I seem to recall that production schedules for modern commerical airlines at Airbus and Boeing are also completely booked for several years, especially on newer models such as 787’s, A-380’s, or 777’s. Since the 777 has only been in service since 1995, I doubt anyone would want to sell one to BA on short notice.
Do airlines or any other entity that the airlines can contract to keep flyable aircraft on reserve somewhere? What about that giant, “airplane graveyard,” in the Mojave desert? Could a commerical airline call up whoever owns those planes and arrange to put one back into service? How fast could that happen and how much would it cost to bring such an aircraft back?
Do they just cancel flights way out into the future and just try to rebook passengers on other airlines? I think the BA 777 was going between London and Beijing, how would that route market respond to such a cancellation? Does the inventory on those routes just drop and the price skyrocket until people decide they don’t really need to make that plane-trip so badly?
I don’t recall all the details, but airlines do keep aircraft that they aren’t using (perhaps due to a downturn in the market) in that “boneyard” in Mojave. How quickly one can be called up depends on what sort of storage prep was done on it, but it ranges from (I think) 24-48 hours to a couple weeks. No doubt there would need to be some sort of inspection, then you have to fly it half way around the world. I’d think at least a week at a minimum to get one into actual service.
They have extra planes somewhere. My family and I were booked for a flight from Chicago to New Orleans three months ago. The pilot started the runup of the engines and then quickly shut them down. It didn’t seem all that unusual but within a minute, the plane was surrounded by fire trucks and other vehicles with big flashing lights. The odd thing was that no one showed any obvious concern. It was an engine problem and a little while later, the mechanics declared the plane unfit to fly.
We deboarded the plane and they had a new plane for us within 30 minutes. We weren’t even very late. I guess that it helps that we were at one of the busiest airports in the world but they have extra planes somewhere. Maybe they use a trick of rescheduling and shuffling around other planes though.
I would think that another airline could loan them an aircraft. Between you and all the other airlines in the airport, I’m sure some shuffling around could be done. That plane that was supposed to be done for the day? Not anymore. It doesn’t even have to be readily available, just find an extra plane that’s ready to go and fill in the gap later with your own extra.
Yes, that too, but the desert environment is also a good one for putting an aircraft into long-term storage and there are outfits that provide the space and maintenance required for that purpose in the same general area.
Airlines can reschedule their services, perhaps drop the slightly less profitable routes.
Do the same with their servicing, there’s usually a certain amount of leeway in when an aircraft has to go in for its checks.
Then there is the option of leasing another aircraft from another airline/ manufacturer etc. Various leasing arrangements can be made e.g. wet/dry/damp/finance/ operating.
It’s not really that desirable to have “spare” aircraft in an airline. Of course it does happen but an aircraft on the ground is not making money.
The airlines have extra planes. They require a lot of maintenance, and a fair amount of down time is expected. If a plane breaks down (or crashes), there is some shuffling of planes until a new one gets flown in from storage somewhere. On my last trip to Vegas, they gave ‘our’ plane to another flight whose plane was having problems. They gave us a plane which had just been (unsuccessfully it would turn out) repaired.
From your being able to post, I take it the lack of success precluded your even trying to see if the fix would fly
But as mentioned before, it’s possible to do a relatively-short-notice lease/rental of an airplane from a company dedicated to that sort of brokering. Even if it’s not the exact same plane, they’ll find something that fills the gap. Of course, if you’re a big enough airline you can do a chain-reshuffling of flights among your own fleet so that you can maintain the profitable routes going even if it means that now you only have 250 instead of 350 seats available and elsewhere in the world, the Ouagadougou-Mumbai redeye just got cancelled immediately until further notice. Over the very short term you will inevitably have a few cancelled flights, whose confirmed passengers you then have to redistribute to other flights in your own or another airline.
Large airlines such as BA are able, in the short term, to reschedule their routine maintenance program to make up for lost capacity elsewhere. They plan for this and do it all the time - aircraft quite often need to go out of service for a while, just not normally in such a catastrophic or newsworthy manner. Smaller budget airlines run a much tighter maintenance schedule and the unexpected withdrawal of an aircraft can seriously impact service. However, they are even less concerned about their passengers than the big boys and just leave them stranded until they can get it sorted.
Replacing a particular type plane that is in short production supply is difficult, but the overall supply of planes is more flexible.
Airlines will substitute different equipment when necessary. What used to be a 777 run may be a 767 run for a while, for example.
I am sure Airbus and Boeing would work a replacement into their production schedule on a high-priority basis, especially if there is any question around a manufacturer defect as the precipitating cause. It’s not a very common occurrence to lose a plane.
RNATB is indeed correct. Here’s a good description. There are both temporary and, well, “final” storage operations at Mojave, and smaller ones elsewhere in the southwest US desert.
