Ground support equipment and flight delays: a multivariate analysis in different locations

In an airline, each aircraft flying represents revenue, and each aircraft stuck on the ground represents operating costs. The company’s operational efficiency depends on the constant mitigation of flight delays, and aircraft maintenance depends on Ground Support Equipment (GSE) to carry out its tasks. The number of maintenance bases increases with the increase in the number of destinations sold by the airline. This work introduces a quantitative method to relate different GSEs in different locations and consider the most significant impacts on flight delay. A case study was developed and applied to a large airline company, and 15 airports were considered, 13 in Brazil and 2 in Argentina. To this end, three major inputs of unstructured data were considered: (i) document analysis, (ii) interviews, and (iii) electronic forms. After the data processing stage, a statistical test was applied, which allowed for the identification of which aircraft maintenance bases required priority attention. The results of the correspondence analysis test differed from those of the descriptive statistics analysis, highlighting the importance of incorporating this test into the decision-making process. The company in this case study had set aside an amount of US$500,000 to improve productivity and reduce the number of flight delays. After the analysis and investigation stage, it was observed that 11 of the 17 most critical cases could be resolved with an investment of US$120,000, in the same way that the other cases could be resolved with the money in the budget. The results achieved demonstrated a contribution to theory by filling the identified gap, as well as a contribution to practice by presenting an additional method for decision-making to assist in the allocation of investments. Additionally, there are societal contributions made by relating these problems to flight delays.