Graham Warwick WASHINGTON DC
Can airlines agree to buy a standard aircraft, in the hope of reducing costs, or will each continue to demand hundreds of custom changes that set its aircraft apart from any other carrier's? That is the question facing an airline task force which is to be set up to study the feasibility of aircraft standardisation (Flight International, 11-17 November).
The task force, operating under the aegis of the Society of Automotive Engineers' (SAE) Aerospace group, is to present its report by May next year, to the senior advisory committee of the US Air Transport Association (ATA). If some degree of standardisation is found to be feasible, the ATA will seek endorsement of the concept from airline chief executives.
One chief executive is already giving the concept his full backing. Admitting that United Airlines "-is one of the leading option adders in the industry", chairman Gerald Greenwald says: "Standardisation is an idea that can save airlines a lot of money, improve safety, reduce delivery time and not diminish competition between manufacturers."
Greenwald gave a powerful endorsement of the concept at the SAE/ATA "standard aircraft" symposium in Washington DC, on 5 November. He believes that Airbus Industrie and Boeing could reduce prices by 10-20% if standardisation allowed them to produce airframes at maximum efficiency.
The manufacturers are more cautious, but agree that substantial reductions in customisation costs - currently 3-4% of purchase price - are possible through increased standardisation. They are also encouraged that the renewed interest in the standard aircraft concept is coming from the airlines themselves.
"The idea has been stuck on the ground for a long time," says Greenwald, acknowledging that "...more than half the problem is on the side of the airlines." By forcing United to take a leading role in the debate over aircraft standardisation, he hopes to persuade other airlines to join in, saying: "The best guys to solve the problem are those that created it."
CUSTOMISATION DEBATED
According to a White Paper circulated by the SAE, the current round of the "customisation versus standardisation" debate opened in 1996, when cost-conscious airlines queried Boeing on the price impact of unique options, and received a sobering response. Around the same time, Lufthansa was coming to terms with the fact that its highly customised aircraft were proving hard to sell on the used market.
Among the data collected by Boeing was the fact that, over five years for all models, more than 14,000 changes were processed for customer airlines. "Of those changes, 72% were for single customers; ie 10,000 changes were produced based on single requests from the airlines, while only 4,000 were shared by two or more customers," says the SAE White Paper.
Lufthansa began comparing notes with Boeing, and the result was a working paper on the benefits of standardisation, which it presented to 15 carriers assembled in Seattle in December 1996 for the 747-500/600 airline working group. Lufthansa also briefed carriers attending a "customisation versus standardisation" conference hosted by Airbus in Toulouse in June 1997.
Airbus, Boeing, Lufthansa and United subsequently gave presentations on the standard aircraft concept at a forum organised by the SAE in October 1997. This resulted in an agreement that the SAE and ATA would lead an effort to establish a critical mass of airline acceptance that would persuade Airbus and Boeing to pursue the concept in greater detail.
The Washington symposium resulted from that forum, and produced an agreement to form the airline task force on aircraft standardisation. British Airways, Delta Air Lines, Lufthansa and United are among the carriers which have agreed to participate, and both Airbus and Boeing will take part.
Laying down the challenge at the opening of the symposium, Greenwald - a former Chrysler executive - cited the example set by the automotive industry, which "...reduced options dramatically and the customer didn't notice. "Limiting available options allowed the automotive industry to reduce concept-to-market cycle times and provided the customer with more value for money, he says.
"Manufacturers should limit the airlines' options to what the passengers see, feel and taste," Greenwald suggests. "Customers are right to demand lower cost, faster delivery and better reliability-but airlines are their own worst enemies in demanding more customisation," he believes.
EFFORTS UNDERMINED
Standardisation is not a new idea, but the airlines themselves have undermined previous efforts to promote the concept. Greenwald says a 747 more-standard cockpit initiative launched by Boeing fell apart when airlines began asking for "little" changes. As a result, there are today 31 unique designs for the 747 cockpit clipboard alone, he says.
Greenwald says United believed that, as launch customer on the 777, it could limit the options added by having its preferences adopted as standard. "Good theory, bad reality," he says. "United ended up including more options than any other 777 customer - 23% above the average number of features added."
Most often the reason for adding a feature was technical "tradition" within the airline, says Greenwald. "So we have to start a dialogue and fix it next time. We have to ask our technical folks 'why do you want that feature so badly?'."
An airline's marketing department can also be opposed to standardisation, Greenwald admits. "Marketing fears standardisation means a loss of image or branding, but while a different seat establishes individuality, a different galley does not. Do we need a unique galley? Does the passenger care?"
While he believes that customisation should be limited to the cabin, United's chief executive sees room even there for more standardisation. He would like to see modular seat and galley designs and "plug-and-play" interfaces for the inflight entertainment (IFE) system. He describes as "deplorable" the cost and time required to certificate seats and believes the certification burden created by customisation is "...stretching the FAA [US Federal Aviation Administration] to the limit."
FAA associate administrator for regulation and certification, Thomas McSweeney, told the symposium that "...standardisation through the life of an aircraft really helps the authorities. We do not have unlimited resources and standardisation saves resources, which can be applied to improving safety."
McSweeney says the FAA, as a regulator, "...sees a lot of duplication, which adds to cost, but not to safety." Airlines customise the aircraft's maintenance manual, he says, then outsource work to a repair station, which sees a different set of instructions for each carrier. "There's a world for that - and it's 'chaos', he says, adding: "Human factors issues are reduced if maintenance is standardised."
Similarly, airlines customise the flight operations manual. "The changes are cosmetic, add cost and drive the FAA crazy," he says.
"If we want to reduce cost and improve safety, we need to look at the life cycle of the product," says McSweeney. "Standardisation in design, production, operation and maintenance can improve safety and allow safety oversight to be reduced. It's a win-win proposition."
Greenwald believes the safety benefits of standardisation will "-come for free. If we can cut the number of permutations, we will reduce the number of mistakes." He wants manufacturers to offer a "standard" baseline aircraft; with "regular" options that are already engineered, certificated and priced; and "specials" for which the added cost and time are visible to the customer.
He also wants manufacturers to "batch" changes to the aircraft. "Today we buy the same aircraft, but still change it. We create customisation for each aircraft we buy," he says. "Mandatory changes should not wait, but if they are not safety-related then manufacturers should batch improvements."
Airbus says it already offers, for each of its fly-by-wire designs, a standard specification that describes "-a flyable, certifiable aircraft that can be bought sight unseen and which will roll off the line fully equipped". The manufacturer also offers a catalogue of options "-based on an assessment of the common requirements of the airlines". These options are pre-engineered and pre-certificated, the cost of which is "-amortised over the programme and not just one customer's fleet".
While acknowledging that "airlines need to differentiate", Airbus tries to provide incentives to minimise customisation, says vice-president commercial operations Paul Mason. He admits that no aircraft have been built to the standard specification, but says 65-70% are built "out of the catalogue". In the remaining aircraft, "90% of the changes are cabin-related", he says.
Mason believes it should be possible to cut cabin customisation costs by 20% through the use of common galley and seat modules, while IFE installation costs could be reduced by 20-25% if interfaces were standardised. "IFE is now 50% of the cabin cost," he says.
Standard provisioning for IFE is cited as an example of standardisation by John Roundhill, vice-president of product strategy and development for Boeing Commercial Airplane Group. "Standardisation does not mean that every part of every aircraft is the same," he says. "What the passenger experiences should be tailored, but there is opportunity to standardise in areas that do not affect the passenger."
Boeing is supportive of a move to standardise aircraft, Roundhill says. "But it takes both sides: the manufacturer and the customer. We need the airlines' help." That is where the new task force comes in. While both Airbus and Boeing have agreed to participate, they made it clear at the Washington symposium that they have different design philosophies and would not welcome any airline efforts to standardise between the two manufacturers.
One of the task force's objectives is to estimate the possible cost benefits of standardisation, to win support for the concept from airline chief executives. Greenwald is convinced: "We won't know how good it is until we get there," he says, predicting that the benefits will be "huge".
Roundhill agrees that savings from standardisation could be greater than at first seem possible, once the benefits flow back into production. "Historically, this industry's production system is set up to manage change. It is now moving towards a system that can handle standard features," he says. "We are making progress.
Source: Flight International
