If you’re flying to your family on a holiday weekend your major concern is to get from A to C in the shortest time possible. During your flight the captain informs the passengers, that they need to divert to a different airport due to a malfunction of one component. Nothing serious, but as a precaution and for safety reason the captain decided to land on the nearest airport. Before even the airplane arrived at the diversion airport, the AOG Services of the technical division is already alerted and try to respond to any AOG request. But what does AOG Services or AOG directly mean. As described in the above short story, the aircraft is called AOG, since due to the technical failure of one aircraft part like the communication system, electrical power loss or just a fuel leak the aircraft is not able to continue to its flight. So the aircraft is on ground or short AOG until the fault has been detected and being repaired. Sometimes it is not as easy as it looks. Intensive test and failure analysis are required to find out the root cause, which can result in that a component needs to be replaced. This way the AOG Desk, a technical support desk, which is operated 24 hours a day, will be called for their AOG Support, in order to get the required component as fast as possible (here on AOG Basis) to support the AOG Team. The AOG Team is closely working with the AOG Support on the main base, finding the correct solution and to keep the AOG situation as short as possible. Not an easy task to fulfill, since large aircraft consist out of more than 100.000 parts and some of them are linked to each other, which makes it even more complicated. This is why the AOG services, the AOG Desk and the on-site AOG support need to work closely together. But it is not only the AOG itself. There are many hands involved, which work in the background. Certainly the AOG on-site support physically works on the aircraft, but the logistic itself is also working under AOG condition, to get the required component as fast as possible to the required person. Both the AOG on-site support and the AOG logistic support need to work together and have an open communication. Otherwise it does not help the AOG support team if the AOG logistic support supplies a wrong part, or if the AOG support team does not give precise information, which part they need to solve the AOG (Aircraft on ground) situation.
Logistical Support during an AOG Situation
As already mentioned the AOG Support team is part of a whole AOG Services, which need to work closely together to keep the time of the aircraft grounded as short as possible. The time until the aircraft can fly again is a measurement how the different AOG Support departments work together. It starts with the AOG Support desk at the home station, who works on solutions for the AOG situations. Information about required components or parts is then handed over to the AOG desk, which sources the part and hands over the information to the shipping department. The shipping department dispatches also on AOG priority the required components either from a supplier directly or from the home base to the place where the aircraft is on ground (AOG). The term of AOG priority is also known in the logistic industry. Any package dispatched under AOG priority, will be the first package, which will be taken care of and the first package to leave the logistic center to the desired destination. Under AOG priority nearly everything can be sent. Either it is a small package, or a complete engine. All the major logistic players established an AOG desk to accommodate AOG requests from airlines. Certainly sending a package under AOG priority has not the same price as regular shipments. This is a premium product and is priced at around the 2 to 4 times the regular price. This price needs to be related to the price for an aircraft to be on the ground (AOG) . An AOG (aircraft on ground) cost nearly 120.000 USD per hour, taken in consideration, the lost revenues, the running cost of lease rates and the cost of the rescheduling of passengers on other flights or hotel costs. So every airline tries to rectify an AOG situation as fast as possible. But the AOG situation does not end when the part arrives at the aircraft. Aircraft Mechanics need to verify that all aspects of the maintenance are done properly and that the AOG support chain worked well. Until the aircraft is ready and is released by the mechanics back to service the AOG situation has been cleared. Some airlines or operators already have some essential spare parts on board to solve known problems. But it needs to be considered, whether the airline or operator want to carry such AOG Kit with it or not.
