Reporter | Xue Bingbing
The epidemic has lasted for nearly two years, and the global aviation industry has not yet been revived. In the context of the loss of passengers, a large number of aircraft have been parked idle, filling aprons, taxiways and even runways, and many international hub airports have been forced to become temporary "large parking airports".
The most miserable thing is the airlines. The suspension of the aircraft means that it is impossible to carry passengers to generate revenue, but also to bear the additional cost of storage and regular inspection and maintenance, and such a "double loss" is not known how long it will last.
Throughout 2020, global air traffic fell by 60%-70% compared with before the epidemic, and according to the International Air Transport Association, 13,700 aircraft worldwide were forced to fly, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the global fleet.
Specific to the domestic aviation market, due to the changeable situation of the epidemic situation, the number of airlines parking aircraft is also fluctuating. According to the statistics of industry media at the end of October 2020, Air China, China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines and Hainan Airlines have grounded a total of 162 aircraft.
Interface news reporter through the planespotters.net website to carry out the latest statistics, as of now, Air China, China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines, Hainan Airlines a total of 239 passenger aircraft grounded (this article of statistics excluded 737-8MAX models). The number of grounded flights has risen significantly, or it may have a lot to do with the downturn in the civil aviation market in the second half of this year.
A front-line personnel of an aircraft maintenance company told Interface News that airlines will give priority to their main operating bases when parking aircraft, such as China Eastern Airlines mainly parked in Shanghai, and Air China basically parked in Beijing. If the main base airport parking space is not enough, it may be stored at a nearby airport, "only the Boeing 737MAX has a long grounding time, in order to avoid the climate to be too harmful to the aircraft, it will be transferred to the northwest and other regions with a dry climate." ”
He also said that during the epidemic, the airport will close individual taxiways and only use them to park planes.
First, airlines pay the airport for downtime, ranging from a few hundred to a thousand yuan per day for each aircraft. At the same time, aircraft parking is not simply placed in a fixed site, in order to maximize the protection of the aircraft, it is necessary to carry out strict storage work, and these tasks are often handed over to aircraft maintenance companies.
Interface News has learned that domestic aircraft maintenance companies mainly include three categories, the first type is owned by airlines, such as Beijing Aircraft Maintenance Engineering Co., Ltd. (referred to as Ameco), a subsidiary of Air China, China Eastern Airlines Engineering technology Company under China Eastern Airlines, And China Southern Airlines Engineering and Technology Branch under China Southern Airlines, and smaller airlines have their own aircraft maintenance engineering departments.
The second category is the third-party aircraft maintenance unit, such as Shandong Swire, Chengdu Saifuwei, Kunming Longrui and so on. The third category is the aircraft engineering department of the airport group, and in recent years, the aircraft engineering department of some large airports has been transformed into an aircraft maintenance company.
Airlines generally choose their own maintenance company to carry out maintenance work, and the entrustment that cannot be completed by themselves is handed over to a third-party unit or airport group.
According to the relevant personnel of china Eastern Airlines Technology Pudong Base, different types of aircraft have different storage requirements, which can be roughly divided into three categories: short-term parking, short-term storage and long-term storage. The longer the aircraft is parked, the more work needs to be performed, mainly to avoid corrosion of the aircraft during the parking period, the performance of various batteries is attenuated, etc., and the aircraft needs to be regularly inspected and maintained during the storage period.
Regular maintenance is mainly based on the sealing of the work card, including 7 days of inspection, 15 days of inspection, 30 days of inspection and more than 30 days of inspection, etc., the inspection content is detailed to the aircraft energization test and the inspection of various systems and components, from the inspection of the tire pressure of the aircraft, to the steel cable survey and engine commissioning of the whole machine.
The front-line personnel told Interface News that the aircraft in operation should carry out pre-flight inspections, stop-by inspections, and post-flight inspections every day to do routine maintenance or sudden troubleshooting; and aircraft in the state of storage are inspected according to a specific cycle. From the perspective of the size of the maintenance workload alone, the workload of the aircraft in the storage state is small, but the two end and end links of sealing and unsealing will involve the disarming and recovery of many systems, and the business volume is relatively large and the cost is high.
According to the maintenance personnel, because the storage is not a normal work, the consumables used in the storage may be temporary procurement, the price is high, and the desiccant placed in the cabin and the engine is typical. In addition, the storage of aircraft batteries and batteries for a long time will also produce losses.
Regular inspection and maintenance also requires the payment of labor costs, which are included in the salary and man-hours of maintenance personnel.
According to the 2020 financial report of the three major airlines, in the "cost analysis table" of Air China, the remaining seven cost amounts have declined significantly due to the decline in flight volume and the reduction in the number of passengers, and only the cost of aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul has not decreased, but has risen, an increase of 4.96% year-on-year to 6.423 billion yuan, and the cost in the first half of this year was 3.586 billion yuan.
China Eastern Airlines' "cost analysis table" shows that the remaining eight cost amounts have decreased to varying degrees, while Feifa repairs have increased by 2.1% year-on-year to 3.451 billion yuan; Similarly, China Southern Airlines has reduced a number of cost amounts due to the reduction in air traffic, while aircraft maintenance and repair costs have increased by 4.53% year-on-year to 10.2 billion yuan, and aircraft and engine maintenance costs in the first half of this year were 3.968 billion yuan.
The most important problem is that "aircraft in operation can be profitable, but mothballed aircraft cannot be profitable", and this part of the hidden cost, although it cannot be accurately measured, is the most pressure on the airline.
Compared with narrow-body aircraft, the proportion of aircraft parked and sealed in wide-body passenger aircraft is higher, and before the epidemic, these aircraft were mainly used to operate long-distance international flights, but at present, international flights are almost stagnant, in order to reduce costs, airlines will temporarily put wide-body aircraft into the domestic market to operate.
In the first half of this year, the civil aviation market picked up significantly, flight steward data show that in the first half of 2021, the utilization rate of civil aviation passenger fleet aircraft was 6.1 hours / day, wide-body passenger aircraft was 5.6 hours / day, and the number of domestic flights operated by wide-body aircraft increased by 2.58% compared with 2019, but after the local epidemic occurred in various places, the number of wide-body aircraft flights dropped significantly.
However, the transfer of domestic routes can only digest part of the capacity of wide-body aircraft, and in most cases, because the occupancy rate is not ideal, passenger revenue cannot cover various costs, and the result of wide-body aircraft operating domestic flights is basically "flying one flight and losing one flight".
According to the 2018 China Aviation Operating Cost Estimate released by the China Industry Information Network under Zhiyan Consulting, taking the Beijing-Shanghai golden route as an example, if the wide-body aircraft operation is adopted, the cost of aviation fuel is about 75,000 yuan, the depreciation cost is about 40,000 yuan, the take-off and landing fee is 20,000 yuan, the ground service fee is 5,500 yuan, etc., and the comprehensive cost is close to 180,000 yuan.
Reporters inquired about the recent fares of the Beijing-Shanghai line, the economy class fare operated by Airbus 330 is mostly between 650-950 yuan, the business class fare is more than 2000-3000 yuan, according to the load factor of 70%, the ticket revenue of a flight is about 200,000 yuan, after deducting the cost, it only reaches a small profit level, not to mention other fares and routes where the load factor is not guaranteed.
In the face of this dilemma, the aircraft parking is a relatively better choice for airlines, as of now, among the four major airlines, Hainan Airlines has the highest number of wide-body aircraft parking, reaching 44, even exceeding China Southern Airlines, which has the largest fleet size; China Eastern Airlines has more narrow-body aircraft, the number of A320 series aircraft has reached 63, and the number of aircraft parked by Air China's narrow-body aircraft and wide-body aircraft is close, 20 and 21 respectively.