PAINLESSon time, on budget

REDELIVERIES

CASE STUDY

About the customerSwiss International Air Lines (SWISS) is the national airline of Switzerland. It serves 102 destinations in 46 countries all over the world from bases in Zurich and Geneva. With a fleet of 95 aircraft, SWISS transports 16 million passengers every year and has 8245 employees. It is part of the Lufthansa Group and a member of the Star Alliance.

aircraft95

passengers16m

employees8245

countries46

The challengeOnly last year, SWISS was operating a paper-based model to manage all its aircraft records. With a fleet of almost 100 aircraft and an average of 40 boxes - with 100,000 documents - per aircraft this was a hugely labour intensive, expensive and inefficient way of working. When the time came to redeliver the aircraft, it meant physically hosting the lessor onsite for weeks to go through the boxes and build the history as best they could.

Things had to change. SWISS was about to embark on a major asset transition programme with over a third of its fleet, 34 aircraft, leaving over the next 3 years. With a number of returns scheduled during 2016 and 2017, including big aircraft like the A340-300, and some at almost 20 years old, they required a more effective way of working as well as extra support to get through the sheer volume of work involved.

They also needed to adopt industry best practice to ensure these records were in the best possible condition in order to meet the criteria to return them off-lease or sell them on and realise their optimal commercial value.

The solutionSWISS evaluated several providers and selected FLYdocs as it presented the most advanced and best value for money solution on the market.

FLYdocs began working on the major 2-year lease returns and sales programme to build audit and present the aircraft records in August 2015.

Key technical members of the FLYdocs team were based onsite between Basel and Zurich for the first 3 months to ensure the successful implementation, training and adoption of the system. The FLYdocs scanning team were also there, scanning and migrating all existing aircraft records and inputting them into the FLYdocs aircraft data and records management system.

Following the initial exercise, FLYdocs began the build and audit of records for 13 aircraft to help with the forthcoming redeliveries.

The resultsFLYdocs has already helped successfully redeliver three A340s to the lessors, making room in the fleet for the new incoming deliveries. The process is now much smoother and SWISS no longer has to have the lessor onsite in Basel to review the records.

“FLYdocs is an excellent tool, which allows us to be prepared and in a proactive position instead of reacting to document findings from a lessor just before the physical inspection starts. The feedback from the lessors is always positive as they can review the documents online and on different remote locations. Thanks to FLYdocs we are in the position to redeliver our aircraft to the lessors within time and budget.”Werner Reiser Senior Manager Phase Out ProgramSWISS International Air Lines Ltd.

The futureFollowing the success of the FLYdocs implementation, effective team work and smooth redeliveries, FLYdocs is now also managing the return of six RJ100s. This project involves managing the full process and all parties involved.

SWISS is facilitating meetings with Lufthansa Technik AG, Austrian Airlines and Brussels Airlines to share its experience of the intensive Phase Out Programme with a standardised Phase Out Process in accordance with the IATA Guideline and using FLYdocs as the standard tool for upcoming phase outs within the Lufthansa Group.

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