SUMMER 2012 | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | CASE STUDY: VIRGIN ATLANTIC | 29
Interfacing with Ultramain
The benefits for the Lessor team are also substantial; they get full access to all documentation and online statuses covering the entire return process without having to pay for daily expenses, hotels, flights and associated costs for every consultant, whilst at the same time being able to track everything done by each team member on a daily basis from live interactive reports built into the system. With Virgin Atlantic’s foresight in using FLYdocs, and a fully engaged Lessor, the process of returning an aircraft becomes structured, smooth, financially beneficial for both parties and affords instant visibility for everyone. In short, with a proper approach and FLYdocs, it should be possible to deliver the records for every aircraft return on time and for it to have very little impact on the ‘day job’. “We’re now firmly entering the next phase, which is very exciting for us;” confirms Steve Sayers, “Virgin Atlantic have now commenced roll out of a plan to manage almost all internal facing documentation within FLYdocs. Instead of storing documentation on multiple network hard drives, we’re now going to store all data within FLYdocs [which gives instant visibility worldwide], but more importantly, it will also be generated and managed there, which is a major step forward. We’re looking to roll out full authoring of documentation and digital signatures within FLYdocs, which dramatically reduces ancillary time required for managing these documents physically as they go through approval processes. The additional long term benefit is that these documents can then be plugged into the End of Lease modules within FLYdocs to start to build ‘lease return ready’ statuses and approved documentation in real time. The medium and long term benefit to Virgin Atlantic will be massive, because once everything is working in tandem our lease return documentation will basically build itself. “We’re already seeing this happening. FLYdocs rolled out their interactive Engine Centre recently, which means we can now build and manage lease-ready back-to-birth documentation for our Engine fleet in real time. This process will shortly be replicated for our Gears, APUs, Repairs and much more. “From Summer 2012 Virgin Atlantic will be able to interactively repair, map and inspect the fleet online with FLYdocs’ Repair Centre, which is used not only for our day-to-day business as usual repair management; it also interfaces with our internal design documentation and our End of Lease repair statuses so, here also, the data literally starts to build itself. By the end of the year, we expect our line engineers to be able to use Tablet devices to inspect the repairs on any aircraft in the fleet in real time. This is what we call real business gains.”
Now that the fleet is in FLYdocs, the extensive deployment of highly advanced functionality that Virgin Atlantic will come to enjoy as standard in all departments, across the entire business, on a worldwide basis can really begin. The people at FLYdocs have successfully created a live link to Ultramain [Virgin Atlantic’s M&E system] which allows FLYdocs to cross populate data for engineers to access anywhere in the world. Now that we have piloted this process with a great deal of success, it will be further expanded to other areas of the business, such as building truly live statuses in the new system where audit documentation builds itself; managing live hours and cycles and forecast reporting for Lease Returns in harmony with Ultramain. The possibilities are almost endless. It’s important for us that FLYdocs is able to deliver this type of change to Virgin Atlantic, because, so often, a software provider will promise the moon and deliver the earth. In two years’ time we expect Virgin Atlantic to be enjoying huge gains across almost every facet of the business as standard — we know this because we have worked in partnership as a team to plan what both sides will do to make this happen, then as a team we follow that plan and make it happen. Where there is a need to create new technology or new solutions we are confident that FLYdocs have the expertise to do it; both high level technical aviation staff and expert software developers. They have their own teams in the UK, US, Hong Kong, India and the Philippines working on different areas [either technical aviation work or software development], to offer us a truly global 24 hour coverage and to be able to deliver solutions for Virgin Atlantic.
The Relationship
Adrian Ryan adds, “The process of integrating with Virgin Atlantic over the last 12-18 months has been a pleasure. We’ve worked together as equal parties with common goals, solving problems and pushing boundaries along the way. Virgin Atlantic, as our flagship development partner, will continue to have our total support throughout our working agreement during which FLYdocs will deliver company-wide benefits in Aircraft Re-deliveries, Document Management, Aircraft Management, Repair Management, Engine Management, Gear Management, APU Management, Airworthiness Management and much more. “This is a very exciting period of growth for FLYdocs and we are looking forward to leading the way globally in finally bringing some long overdue e-tech know-how into Aircraft Documentation.” Steve Sayers agrees, “For us at Virgin Atlantic, FLYdocs represent a refreshing ‘can do’ approach which we don’t often see in the industry. To date, everything they said they would do has been done without any fuss and exactly the way we wanted it, and in many cases they’ve gone over and above what we originally wanted in order to give us an even better service or solution than the original plan required. Virgin Atlantic has a very strong brand ethos, we like to deliver excellence to our customers and give them an experience they will find hard to match anywhere else in the marketplace. This is what FLYdocs is giving to us, and we’re delighted.” n
Photo: © John M Dibb
ABOUT VIRGIN ATLANTIC
Founded in 1984 by British entrepreneur Richard Branson as part of the Virgin Group, Virgin Atlantic Airways has grown to a major international player serving destinations on five continents from its London Gatwick base and London Heathrow. With 5.3 million passengers, Virgin was the eighth largest UK airline by passenger numbers in 2011. The airline also operates a significant cargo business. Virgin has always prided itself on the quality of its service from the fittings on the aircraft to the standards of its cabin crew service. It is a member of the Star Alliance and enjoys some 14 code sharing arrangements around the world. The current fleet consists of 40 aircraft: B747-400 plus A340-300 & 600 with 10 Airbus A330-300 aircraft currently entering service. Also on order are 15 Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners due to start entering service in 2014 and 6 Airbus A380s being delivered from 2015. With these aircraft, Virgin’s fleet will remain one of the youngest in the world.