UPS Gives Old Jets New Life in CEO’s Push to ‘Sweat the Assets’

[cheryl]

UPS Gives Old Jets New Life in CEO’s Push to ‘Sweat the Assets’ - Yahoo

Imagine ripping out the dashboard of your 20-year-old minivan and replacing it with the high-tech controls from a Tesla.

That’s pretty much what United Parcel Service Inc. is doing to squeeze two more decades of life from dozens of aging Airbus SE freighters by revamping their cockpit computers. It’s all part of new Chief Executive Officer Carol Tome’s strategy to “sweat the assets” by increasing efficiency while reducing investment.

The 52 Airbus A300-600 jets were purchased beginning in 2000 and the flight computer has such limited memory that it can’t store full navigational maps, forcing UPS to divide the U.S. into five regions to hold the information. Each update takes 45 minutes and has to be done each time a plan needs to fly to a different area.

 

[rod]

UPS Gives Old Jets New Life in CEO’s Push to ‘Sweat the Assets’ - Yahoo

Imagine ripping out the dashboard of your 20-year-old minivan and replacing it with the high-tech controls from a Tesla.

That’s pretty much what United Parcel Service Inc. is doing to squeeze two more decades of life from dozens of aging Airbus SE freighters by revamping their cockpit computers. It’s all part of new Chief Executive Officer Carol Tome’s strategy to “sweat the assets” by increasing efficiency while reducing investment.

The 52 Airbus A300-600 jets were purchased beginning in 2000 and the flight computer has such limited memory that it can’t store full navigational maps, forcing UPS to divide the U.S. into five regions to hold the information. Each update takes 45 minutes and has to be done each time a plan needs to fly to a different area.

What the hell? Did UPS buy the cheap model to begin with?

 

[oldngray]

Airbus is crap even when new.

 

[Roller252]

Cradle cradle cradle, sounds like the pilots Orion trace % is down and someone wants to FIX it.

 

[silenze]

Whats the problem? Your telling me that the turnaround time at worldport is less then 45 min? It's not like they can load the planes in less then 45 minutes. Thats not why we have late air

 

[TTLS1]

Whats the problem? Your telling me that the turnaround time at worldport is less then 45 min? It's not like they can load the planes in less then 45 minutes. Thats not why we have late air

youre right the plane has more than 45 mins on the ground, but it also gets an arrival check, the mechanics have 2 other planes to catch and do arrival checks on and if theres actually a problem with the plane that eats up time. the Nav data loads are annoying.

 

[Fuzzy Brown]

My guess is Ms. Tome will have a seven figure position on Honeywell’s board after UPS.

 

[TTLS1]

for the record, the airbus modification was going on before she took CEO position, and it was planned long before she was in the CEO spot. other than being CEO while them mod is going on, she had no input on the mod as far as i know. the 1 airbus we got back that has been modded was in mod for over a year.

 

[BaSEless]

Sounds like back in the days when UPS retrofitted some 727s to be able to toggle between passenger carriers and cargo carriers. they had modules they would roll into the cargo bay to create an inner passenger space. They used them for this on weekends for charter flights as I recall to "sweat the asset" since there weren't many flights on weekends back then. I don't think it lasted very long - just a few years.

 

[Returntosender]

Apple needs the app Apples maps for airplanes