What Strategy Would You Use to Address the Delayed Flight - Essay Example

The entire flight leg is not affected adversely and the cost associated with the flight delay is also minimized (Belobaba, Odoni, Barnhart 263).
Q.3 How will you accommodate aircraft, crew, and passenger recovery?
Answer:
Aircraft recovery.
The flight routes are of the same time length and as such flight swapping has no effect on the amount of fuel cost or maintenance operation per flight time. Both aircraft travel the same hours as previously scheduled. Aircraft A will be in SCL at the end of the recovery period instead of being in ALX while Aircraft B will be in ALX at the end of the recovery period rather than in SCL.

Crew recovery.
Aircraft swapping as a recovery option also requires the crew to swap. One of the two crews assigned to each flight has to swap as the other one remains with the aircraft. Flight swapping calls for the reserve crew to be called to fill in the gap created (Belobaba, Odoni, Barnhart 265). The crew now assigned to WA 1269 will end up in ATL at the end of the recovery period on flight WA 1276. The three crew remaining will be assigned to flight WA 1270 and at the end of the recovery period, they will end up back in SCL on flight WA 1280.
Passenger recovery.
Passenger disruption is minimized in this schedule. The affected flight 1269 resulted in zero passenger disruptions. Flight WA 1270 will have to be delayed for 20 minutes before departure arriving in PHX at 1500h. As a result, there is 20 20-minute arrival delay. Although the flight is delayed, the passenger to ALX will not be affected as the next flight WA 1280 will be ready for departure as scheduled at 1600h. The connecting passengers on flight WA 1270 but on a different airline have a chance of misconnecting.
Q.4 What costs may be associated with your strategy? What specific factors will increase or reduce these costs?

Answer:
Deadheading costs of crew members who find themselves in one position rather than in the usual position. This crew, although, not flying the plane is still considered on duty and has to be paid for this flight. This cost is affected by the place of residence of the crew. The compensation cost of passengers by the airline affects those passengers who have connections to different locations but with a different airline network. This cost is influenced by the number of passengers who are connecting with different carriers.

Reserve crew that has to step in because of the swapping hence increasing the wage cost of the crew. The extra crew available for flight WA 1270 will still earn his pay although he won’t be flying (Belobaba, Odoni, Barnhart 266). This cost is constrained by the crew fixing policy that assigns one crew to remain with the aircraft. Read More