Aircraft Maintenance Cost Management - Research Paper Example

Yet, unlike other issues in business, the issue of airline fleet maintenance has several different determinants that ensure it is an extraordinarily costly/expensive process. Within this way, airlines are perennially faced with the issue of how to maximize airline safety, promote existing standards while at the same time, gaining a price advantage over their competitors. Naturally, even as primary air carriers are locked in continual competition with other air carriers, they are looking for each and every opportunity to cut costs and become even slightly more competitive.

However, most airlines are extraordinarily hesitant to consider trimming budget from airline maintenance funds; fearing that any incident will draw further analysis and criticism to this tactic and potentially make the air carrier somewhat culpable for whatever issue might have occurred. Accordingly, as with so many issues, there is a middle ground; something between an air carrier seeking to spend an extraordinary sum on air fleet maintenance as compared to an air carrier seeking to cut any and all expenses as a means of promoting its own bottom line.

Likewise, the following analysis will focus specifically on some of the determinants of why air fleet maintenance is so exorbitantly expensive as well as put toward some approaches that could potentially reduce the overall time and resources that would be required to address air fleet maintenance needs; while at the same time promoting ethical standards of safety and meeting basic requirements for how air fleet maintenance should be conducted. One of the first determinants for why air fleet maintenance is such a costly endeavor has to do with the variety of different aircrafts that carriers are responsible for flying.

Even a cursory review of major air carriers reveals that they fly many different models of aircraft; requiring a litany of different parts that require special procurement and long hours of training