The standby aircraft and its strategic significance

Airlines operate on razor-thin margins, and while maximizing aircraft utilisation is essential, it leaves carriers exposed to costly disruptions. A single cancellation can cost over €123,000—excluding passenger care—making resilience a strategic imperative.

Knock-on impacts of operational disruption

For airlines already operating at full capacity, even a single disruption can ripple across the network for days, amplifying costs and damaging long-term competitiveness.

This can trigger a cascade of consequences. From a customer perspective, airlines that consistently have disruptions will see their brand deteriorate, prompting passengers to use other carriers viewed as more reliable. Apart from the intangible damage to the brand, disruptions also result in airlines paying compensation, refunds, hotel and meals to their customers as is mandated by law in many markets.

The hidden cost of disruption

Airlines have traditionally added slack to their fleet by maintaining standby aircraft to negate any operational impacts of disruptions. While the cost of maintaining a standby aircraft is visible—lease payments, insurance, and maintenance—the true cost of disruptions hides in plain sight and is often overlooked.

According to EUROCONTROL:

• A widebody cancellation costs €123,900, excluding €64,800 for passenger care and compensation.
• A narrowbody cancellation costs €25,720, excluding €12,400 for passenger care and compensation.

Disruption costs accrue over a period and are spread out across various cost channels. Operators often do not have full visibility of these costs and yet view the cost of a standby aircraft as an inefficient use of funds. However, both costs are captured in financial statements and will have an impact on the bottom line of the business at the end of a financial year.  

Building slack strategically

Investing in standby aircraft during significant disruptions offers a proven way to hedge against operational volatility—but they must be deployed strategically.

When an airline is already struggling with their dispatch reliability and looking to reorganize their network, this can further strengthen the business case to justify a standby aircraft. It can also be used as an opportunity to restructure the network within the existing fleet to maintain slack in the operation without additional requirements to procure new aircraft during times of financial distress.

Dispatch reliability is a key issue especially during peak seasons, so the question remains if adding an extra aircraft offsets any gains during the off-peak season. To maximize value, standby aircraft don’t have to sit idle. During off-peak seasons, they can support ACMI (aircraft, crew, maintenance, and insurance) operations, balance maintenance slots, or adjust capacity to demand.

The goal isn’t unnecessary downtime—it’s resilience without waste.