EA301MAA – Airline Route and Fleet Planning

Outcome 2: Demonstrate an understanding of the global economics underlying fleet
planning according to the market, constraints and the airline’s need.
Outcome 3: Compute data in order to successfully carry out fleet planning analysis.
Outcome 4: Make appropriate recommendations of a fleet type for a particular market
SCENARIO
You are working in the Fleet Planning Department of a major network airline. Your airline is
planning a network expansion which will launch a new route to a destination it is not currently
serving. You have been tasked with writing a business report to senior management that will (1)
identify a suitable destination and the appropriate aircraft and capacity to serve it (2) identify and
calculate key economic parameters to analyse the feasibility of the route (3) make a conclusion
for a go or no-go decision and recommendation on whether or not to launch, based on your
analysis in (1) and (2) above and (4) write a personal learning paper on your experience and
learnings from this assignment and the overall module.
1. Airline and route selection and aircraft allocation
 Choose an airline that you are familiar and/or has a complete set of information easily
available for research e.g. annual reports, fleet configuration etc
 Choose a destination that is not currently served by your airline but has potential
 Choose an aircraft your airline currently operates or will start operating within the near
future. Check and ensure the aircraft you choose has the performance capability to serve
the destination airport based on likely demand and payload requirements
 Estimate passenger and cargo demand over the sector by class both ways between your
hub and the new destination. Note you are a network airline so each sector load will
comprise demand from multiple origins and to multiple destinations provided you
integrate the new flight into your existing schedule so that connections can be made over
your hub airport
 Establish a schedule for the new route.
 Estimate the yield, sector revenue, load factor, RASK for the new flight taking into
account prevailing fares and cargo rates
 Draw up a typical weight build up chart for the new flight to check your assumptions
2
2. Key costs
 Identify, analyse and calculate the three main direct operating costs for the route i.e. fuel,
crew cost and aircraft cost.
 Identify and analyse two other significant direct operating costs associated with the new
flight e.g. ATC/Navigation charges; ground handling charges; maintenance costs; inflight
services etc.
 N.B. Ensure the costs are consistent i.e on a per flight hour, per cycle, per week, per
month or per year basis and that your analysis is consistent with your demand forecast
analysis above
 Add in any other cost factors you see as being pertinent to a full analysis of direct/indirect
operating costs e.g. marketing
3. Conclusion and recommendation
 Make a go or no-go decision to launch the route based on likely success factors
 Justify your decision with reference to the metrics we have used in the course
 Identify any other information or analysis you would want to undertake to reinforce your
analysis and decision
4. Personal learning paper
 Write about the key learnings that you have gained from undertaking this module. From
these discuss what you consider to be the three most important aspects of the Airline
Route and Fleet Planning process and explain why they are important.
Marking Scheme: Maximum Marks Available
1. Airline and Route Selection and aircraft allocation 40
2. Key Costs 35
3. Conclusion and recommendation 10
4. Personal learning paper 5
5. Report format (as shown on Moodle), breadth and depth of research,
referencing (Harvard style), grammar, precision, similarity etc 10
100
N.B. while there is no specific word count I would expect this report to run to 3000-3500 words.
You are encouraged to include appropriate data tables, images and diagrams to assist in your
explanation.
The deadline for submission is midnight (i.e. 23:59 hrs) on 24 May 2018

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