| Summary: | Catering flights is an important part of an airline's operations. The meal service has a critical
impact on customer service quality and represents significant costs. Unfortunately, due to high
passenger load variability and minimum production lead-time requirements, it is difficult to get
the number of meals to exactly match the passenger count on each flight. The objective of the
project is to reduce meal-catering costs due to over-catering while simultaneously improving
service level by reducing under-catering.
The proposed solution takes the form of a meal bank system. This concept suggests that flights
should be systematically under-catered with the possibility of uploading a generic meal to fill in
any shortage at the last minute when the final passenger load is known. A thorough investigation
of current processes was carried in order to define and recommend process change based on the
meal bank approach. The project concludes with a costing analysis of recommended solutions
weighing additional investments, cost savings, and service improvement against current
performance.
Costing analysis results for Vancouver International Airport operations showed that service level
could be improved by an approximate reduction of 50 percent in revenue passenger meal
shortages. Also, net costs can be reduced up to an estimated $190,000 annually.
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