In a sea of operational mess, one problem that stood out starkly for budget airline SpiceJet Ltd promoter and chairman Ajay Singh, when he took back its reigns early this year, was the abysmal on-time performance (OTP) rate, which stood at an average of 49.6% for the four metro airports.
Today, through multi-pronged attack like fixing accountability for any slippage in flight performance, enhancing the speed of Bombardier Q400 planes, squeezing targeted turnaround time for delayed flights and other such innovative measures, Singh's operation team has propped up the OTP to 86.9%, which is amongst the highest in the industry.
Rohit Pal, senior general manager – flight support centre – SpiceJet, says what has helped the most in improving the airline's OTP is enhancing the speed of the Canadian aerospace company's narrow bodied plane Q400, which lead to reduction in block time, which is the duration of a flight, by a few minutes on each flight.
He says the time saved on each flight was then used to put an additional flight, which has translated into more revenues for Gurgaon-based airline.
"So, let's say if I was doing a flight in 1 hour 20 minutes, now by enhancing Q400's speed I can do it in 1 hour 14-15 minutes. This way, I am able to save 5-6 minutes on each flight. Now, one aircraft does about eight flights.
Thus, by saving time on eight flights, I could put an additional flight in the night. Typically, we would have increased aircraft utilisation, instead we have inserted a flight by optimising the aircraft speed. This has also improved our OTP and created get well slots on Q400 routes," he quipped.
Bangalore-based aviation analyst Pankaj Pandit says while this was a very innovative way of improving the OTP, it could have pushed up fuel cost if the aircraft speed was increased beyond its optimal level as that generally results in a higher fuel burn.
04/12/15 Praveena Sharma/dna
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Today, through multi-pronged attack like fixing accountability for any slippage in flight performance, enhancing the speed of Bombardier Q400 planes, squeezing targeted turnaround time for delayed flights and other such innovative measures, Singh's operation team has propped up the OTP to 86.9%, which is amongst the highest in the industry.
Rohit Pal, senior general manager – flight support centre – SpiceJet, says what has helped the most in improving the airline's OTP is enhancing the speed of the Canadian aerospace company's narrow bodied plane Q400, which lead to reduction in block time, which is the duration of a flight, by a few minutes on each flight.
He says the time saved on each flight was then used to put an additional flight, which has translated into more revenues for Gurgaon-based airline.
"So, let's say if I was doing a flight in 1 hour 20 minutes, now by enhancing Q400's speed I can do it in 1 hour 14-15 minutes. This way, I am able to save 5-6 minutes on each flight. Now, one aircraft does about eight flights.
Thus, by saving time on eight flights, I could put an additional flight in the night. Typically, we would have increased aircraft utilisation, instead we have inserted a flight by optimising the aircraft speed. This has also improved our OTP and created get well slots on Q400 routes," he quipped.
Bangalore-based aviation analyst Pankaj Pandit says while this was a very innovative way of improving the OTP, it could have pushed up fuel cost if the aircraft speed was increased beyond its optimal level as that generally results in a higher fuel burn.
04/12/15 Praveena Sharma/dna