19th May 20231st June 2023 by Mark Evans

Changes to hours and cycles – Projection tab

On Monday ~~29^th May~~ 5^th June we’ll be making a small change to the rules that determine how we allocate hours and cycles to aircraft for which we receive no reported utilisation. These changes effect the Projection tab only.

On the Projection tab of Fleets Analyzer, if we have no reported utilisation data for an aircraft, we allocate hours and cycles via the following set of rules (shown in order of precedence):

Set the Average Hours and Cycles for the aircraft to the average for aircraft with the same Operator and Aircraft Series.
Set the Average Hours and Cycles for the aircraft to the average for aircraft with the same Country and Aircraft Series.
Set the Average Hours and Cycles for the aircraft to the average for aircraft with the same Region and Aircraft Series.
Set the Average Hours and Cycles for the aircraft to the global average for aircraft with the same Aircraft Series.
Set the Average Hours and Cycles for the aircraft to the average for aircraft with the same Operator and Aircraft Type.
Set the Average Hours and Cycles for the aircraft to the average for aircraft with the same Country and Aircraft Type.
Set the Average Hours and Cycles for the aircraft to the average for aircraft with the same Region and Aircraft Type.
Set the Average Hours and Cycles for the aircraft to the global average for aircraft with the same Aircraft Type.
Set the Average Hours and Cycles for the aircraft to the global average for aircraft with the same Market Class.

For a rule to be applied to an aircraft, at least half of the “matching aircraft” within the rule e.g. same Operator and Aircraft Series etc. must have reported hours and cycles, if they don’t, then the model moves on to the next rule in the list.

We’ve determined that the model would give better results if this 50% rule was removed, and this change has already been made when utilisation is supplied via some of our non-UI products. The release—planned for May 29^th—will update the model used in Fleets Analyzer and bring it in line with our non-UI products.

As an example of the effect this rule change will have on the Projections tab, in the chart below you can see the monthly hours for the global fleet of A320s, the differences are typically <±3%.

Note: If you are only interested in historic hours and cycles (and not future projections), then the best coverage can be found using our “tracked’ metrics (as opposed to reported). To read more about our tracked data, please refer to this blog post.