AirLine challenges

The challenges facing airlines around the world are well publicized: increasing competition from Low Cost Carriers (LCCs), skyrocketing jet fuel prices, rising labor costs and demand that is subject to turbulent or even dramatic change. Airlines have little control over these issues, but they can exert cost control in the area of aircraft maintenance.

A clear trend is now apparent toward outsourcing certain MRO functions, such as heavy maintenance, or segmenting Technical Operations units into separate P&Ls. Airline maintenance functions typically retained as in-house include line maintenance, maintenance engineering, technical records, maintenance control, quality assurance and reliability, maintenance planning and work package management. With the emergence of outsourcing, airlines are looking for software products that give them greater control over maintenance tasks they are no longer performing in-house. That means they will are looking for simplified systems that target labor costs, procurement, asset control and visibility across functional departments or organizations.

The new LCC business model also relies on the rapid turnaround of maintenance activities for larger numbers of aircraft, which emphasizes the need for accurate record-keeping, tighter inventory control, and cost reduction at every stage of the MRO process. Of course, this has made it increasingly difficult to plan, track, control and manage the range of MRO activities using traditional methods. Fortunately, the emergence of powerful, modern, MRO IT systems now provide airline operators the means to deal with these issues.

Please refer to the following page for information on how Miro's AuRA™ software meets these challenges.