Each airline to their own

A reader asked after my last post about different airlines having different turn around times for the same aircraft. Usually it comes down to the service levels airlines require and how they vary when the aircraft are running late.

Take Airline A, it operates A320s with 180 seats. When it’s running late, they expect a minimum ground time of 50 minutes. However Airline B, using the same aircraft, doesn’t have this 50 minute ground time and expects the aircraft to depart again in the usual 60 minutes, though any time we manage to claw back is of course an advantage. Both are expecting a full service service of cleaning, catering, waste removal, offload and onload.

Both airlines are using the same type on similar routes in the same market so Airline A’s bean counters are obviously more worried about its on-time performance statistics than B. In this case I can't actually give an answer why one one is 50minutes and one is the usual 60. Each to their own I guess.

Some will compromise on the level of servicing required to reduce the ground time. For example a 'pit-stop clean' is a quick clean of the cabin making it look presentable, but it's not the almost spotless cabin you find on the first flight of the day having managed to achieve a full turnaround clean during the night.

Airline C uses slightly smaller aircraft with only 148 seats, but has defined a minimum ground time of 35 minutes. However it’s not purely down to fewer seats = quicker turnaround. It’s more of a low-cost operation and as such the cabin crew clean the cabin. If there’s a crew change occurring, the inbound will lend a hand and help the outbound crew clean the cabin so it’s ready even sooner. There isn’t a team of cleaners come out to the aircraft, just the trash collection and toilet/water service if required. And yes, it does work. 35 minutes requires an incredibly tight ship to be run but it can be achieved. Just yesterday I managed a turnaround of said aircraft in 25 minutes though we were lucky with a light load of only 70 passengers outbound on it.

Incidentally, Airline C expects their 220 seat aircraft to be turned around in 45 minutes. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been spared this challenge so far but I’m told it can be done, though boarding 220 passengers even through two doors takes a significant chunk out of that 45 minutes, as does the bulk loading/unloading of over 200 pieces of luggage. I've possibly just jinxd myself in saying that so I'll be avoiding these flights like the plague in future.

Some airlines have fancy posters that they distribute to the ground agents with a minute by minute schedule of a turnaround and what should be happening 2 minutes after the aircraft arrives on stand etc. I read one in the workplace recently and laughed, I’ve never had it go to plan like this poster but everything is achieved and the aircraft away in the required timeframe. Some of the mentioned items are completed well before their guidelined time and some aren’t completed until after... does that even itself out?