Hi!
Today I had a discussion with my colleagues. Next week we travel from Japan to Europe and the Lufthansa A340-600 landing at Haneda at 10:55 and departs from Haneda at 12:45. So less than two hours to turn round. I found information on A340-600 that TRT is 74 min. (And won the bet :))
Any experience with other airplanes?
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Maybe they have extra time their or there takeoff spot is later so
Ryanair have turnaround times down to 25 minutes.
Still think they’re good?
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I didn’t know you could access all these, so cool
The flight will require a crew change. The length of the turnaround will have to take into account the required down route report times for the down route resting crew.
Haneda ground services (Japan in general to be honest) are excellent when it comes to ground servicing!
The earliest I have seen is 1hr 30min of just cargo being unloaded/loaded on to a md11
Aircraft are not earning money sitting on the ground, so the more efficient the turnaround can be the better. That’s the main operating principle behind many LoCo’s, they try and get as many flights out of each airframe each day.
Virgin typically has 30 minute turnarounds
Southwest used to do 10 minutes, but I think now they’re up to 20-30 minutes due to larger aircraft.
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10mins? that is fast ! I know that Ryanair would like to do it in sub 20 mins but there was pushback by a lot of groups as unable to complete all the necessary safety checks, let alone make sure the cabin is ready for the next passengers.
I think that’s what I read. That was with the 737-200s, though.
What does turn round time have to do with airline quality?
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Quality of profits! 🙂
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74 min seems unrealistic by only allowing 40 min to clean/search the aircraft. Normally with our people, it takes us an hour or so at least to clean/security search an A319
Considering that the Japanese can turn around a 1000-seater train in 8 minutes, 40 minutes to clean and search an A340 isn’t that difficult. If they take too long, just throw more people at the task.
Do you know how much goes into searching an aircraft? At most stations the ground services are contracted out and they only allot the minimum number of employees to do it so the company providing the services makes a profit. We wish we could throw 10-15 people at our planes but it’s not realistic at all.
Yes yes, I know how the US does things. The Japanese are more willing to throw people at a task. The work culture is completely different.
I’m not sure how it works in America but I know that Bristol was going to have direct flights to the USA and it required so many extra security checks because of the possibility of a terrorist attack. That being said though airlines with A320 family aircraft could do it in 30 minutes or so like easyJet and even BA for some routes. In America the risk is a lot higher so maybe more checks etc
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Some companies only allow like 7 minutes for fleet service to come in and clean the entire plane
At the company I work for we have 30 minutes to unload, reload, clean the aircraft, fuel the plane, and deice the plane, and put and pull the ground heater
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It also matters where the flight is coming in from. In my experience international flights have a longer time than others due to customs and additional security checks. I will sometimes board a plane that arrived from Mexico and had an additional delay.
I did have one other question. Is it “Turn Round” or “Turn _A_round”