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Factors which affect the decision to either perform maintenance in-house or subcontract it to an outside organization are complex, and range from purely objective calculations of costs and benefits to the subtleties of behavioral opportunism and risk. Thus safety and economics can be highly interrelated when outsourcing is at issue. Using aircraft maintenance in the civil air transport industry as an example, this paper discusses subtle but important economic factors which should be considered when an outsourcing decision is at hand.

In January of 2000 the first author delivered a Life Cycle Cost study [1] to NASA that modeled SATS in relatively “broad strokes,” guided by general technological forecasts, and theory based on the historical records of emerging industrial paradigms. The report was summarized in an SAE technical paper [2.] Since the delivery of the January 2000 report, the model has been continuously evolving in an independent University setting. This paper is part of an ongoing series of papers and presentations [3,] and reports interim results of a study that compared the Life Cycle Cost characteristics of three aircraft operating in an air taxi environment. The major conclusions point to the business necessity of properly aligning technology, asset utilization, operating capacity (scale,) and market share. Implications are presented.

This paper presents results of research which considered the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) assertion that the Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) will be an economical alternative to automobile and airline travel, when considering the economic value of a traveler's time, within a range of mid-length trips. To simulate a likely near-term niche for SATS, performance was studied in the corporate aviation environment, using NASA's metric for overall transportation performance. Travel$ense software was used to examine the costs of traveling on two hypothetical SATS aircraft versus automobile costs and airline fares, net the cost of travelers' time, traveling among a sample of 53 city pairs in the continental United States.

This paper summarizes several years of research which considered the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's assertion that the Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) will be an economical alternative to automobile and airline travel, when considering the value of travelers' time. Performance was studied in the corporate aviation environment, using NASA's metric for cost effectiveness. Cost, cost effectiveness, and the sensitivity of cost effectiveness to key independent variables were examined. Analyses shed favorable light on NASA's premise.

This paper is a derivative of a report submitted to NASA which investigated the affordability of Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) aircraft. The initial effort developed a Life Cycle Cost (LCC) / Total Ownership Cost (TOC) model. The model is grounded in practical expertise as well as theories relevant to the affordability of significant and discontinuous technological innovations. Input data were either researched from valid and reputable sources, or where assumptions were needed to be made, were made in the spirit of the NASA vision and using its literature. Thus the perspective maintained throughout this phase of research might be termed “realistically optimistic.” The challenge of making the NASA SATS vision bear fruit is ambitious and imposing, yet NASA has earned a reputation for success in such projects.

Contemporary principles of management apply to the aviation maintenance manager as much as they apply to manufacturing, marketing, and other kinds of managers. Maintenance managers plan, organize, lead, and control, all in the context of complying with urgent business imperatives. This paper discusses aviation maintenance management imperatives in hopes of enhancing the professionalism of the field’s culture with regard to airworthiness and safety.