ASSESSMENT OF AIRCRAFT TURNAROUND PROCESS IN MURTALA MUHAMMEDINTERNATIONAL AIRPORT LAGOS

Abstract

The study examined Aircraft turnaround process in Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos (MMIA) holistically using a project modelling technique (critical path method). The study focuses on; identifying the stage(s) involved in aircraft turnaround process, determining the average turnaround time, and examining the factors causing delay in turnaround process. The research work majors on international flights and comprehensively involves the network analysis of the turnaround process of three types of aircrafts, with varying size and capacity. The research explored secondary data sorted from Nigeria Airspace Management (NAMA) and Nigeria Aviation handling company PLC (NAHCO. Six airlines with the most frequent flight were considered for a period of one month using descriptive statistics. The modelling technique (CPM) analysed the data for the three (3) aircraft selected (B773, E145 and B738) with network structures and give result of the study objective sequentially. The study showed that small aircraft in MMIA do not go through all the stages of the turnaround process required for bigger aircraft. The result further reveal that bigger aircraft takes longer time to turnaround than the smaller aircraft and the average turnaround time for aircraft at MMIA is 4hours 24 minutes. The factors causing delays in the process arise from exceeding the time slated for any of the stages of the turnaround process. This implies that delays are embedded in the turnaround process itself. The delay factors identified majorly are from maintenance and repair, passengers and baggage handling. It is thus recommended that the allowable time (buffer time) should be reviewed by all the organisations involved in the turnaround process in other to produce efficient scheduled time table to avoid excessive waiting time for the airport customers.