Volaris, TAM Best A320 Performers

Airbus recognizes operators’ outstanding dispatch relability

During the recent A320 Family Symposium in Toronto, Airbus recognized Volaris and TAM with the “Best Operational Excellence - A320 Family fleet for Americas” Award. Organized every two years for operators worldwide, the key award criteria is dispatch reliability.

Volaris won in the category of fleets below 30 aircraft, while TAM won in the larger fleet category. This is a first-time win for the Mexican low-cost carrier and fifth for TAM.
Volaris and TAM high dispatch reliabilities demonstrate both the criticality for airlines to maximize utilization and the potential productivity to be generated from the A320 Family.

Maximizing utilization has become a must in the industry. The impact of operating an aircraft 200 or 300 more or less hours per year can make the difference between being profitable or not. This is the big lesson LCCs introduced some 10-15 years ago. Today, all airlines aim to achieve the highest levels of utilization, constantly reworking networks and allocating aircraft to squeeze in a few flight hours here and there. Flying an aircraft over 3,000 hours per year, and sometimes higher (AirArabia operates each of its 19 A320 fleet at 5000 hours per year !) is today the norm.

The A320 Family has proven to be an excellent tool to achieve such utilization goals. Designed for exactly that, it is the only single-aisle family to offer extensive health monitoring systems allowing troubleshooting while the aircraft is still in the air and enabling preventive maintenance even before a part becomes faulty. Equally, its robust design has allowed operators to enjoy longer maintenance intervals between checks year after year. In 2011, for instance, maintenance intervals for C-checks should be extended again, most probably by another 20 percent.

Outstanding operational performance, as exemplified by Volaris and TAM, is also why it was decided to not introduce new system modifications for the A320neo, but rather just a re-engine in order to preserve at all price these high levels of productivity.