The outstanding amount of labor hours it takes to service an A380 Aircraft
A recent article authored by Michael Doran with Simple Flying shares insight provided by Alan Joyce, the CEO of the Australian airline Qantas.
Mr.Joyce described the math and mechanics behind bringing a grounded plane back to service. As a result of Covid, Qantas grounded their entire fleet. They have since brought back most models except for the A380s.
Australia's flag carrier, Qantas, has returned almost all of its aircraft to active service, except for the Airbus A380. Qantas has previously said it plans to return ten of its original twelve A380s to service, and one aircraft has been retired and is being stripped for parts.
The A380s require 4,500 labor hours of maintenance work to be brought back to service. This alarming amount of work is obviously a big flag on Mr. Joyce’s radar, but the high cost of labor hours is often neglected by many CFOs. In a recent study performed by the Association for Financial Professionals it was uncovered that most FP&A teams are wasting 75% of their time performing mundane, repetitive and manual tasks instead of high-caliber analysis work. Imagine a CFO with a FP&A team of 20 analysts. If we apply 160 hours per month, this CFO is paying for a total of 3,200 labor hours to advance the functions of the finance department. Now, why are so many CFOs in this situation perfectly content with allowing 2,400 of these hours to be wasted? That is precisely what is happening when the FP&A team is asked to perform their work using outdated budgeting solutions from fifteen years ago or to rely fully on disconnected spreadsheets.
These labor hours are allowed to be wasted to avoid the cost of purchasing and implementing a new FP&A platform with unified functions and centralized data. Even if the ROI is obvious, many finance leaders prefer to avoid technology costs even if it means high leakage in their labor hours. This can only happen if labor hours are not taken seriously as a real cost.
How can that be when the labor cost is the highest expense for nearly every business model?
While this question may not be answered any time soon, you can for now read the full article describing Qantas experience with the A380.