SANTIAGO, CHILE: When you walk into an aircraft cabin the cleanliness and overall visual appearance of the cabin has an immediate effect on your perception not only of that airline but also on the condition and airworthiness of the aircraft as a whole. This fact has been taken very much to heart by LAN’s dedicated cabin impeccability team led by cabin development manager, Carolina Fuertes.
I recently had the opportunity to witness first hand an impeccability inspection of one of LAN’s A340-300′s at their Santiago line maintenance facility. Over 2,000 individual cabin items are visually inspected on each aircraft every month to ensure that the aircraft go into service in an impeccable state and positively contribute to each and every passenger’s travel experience.
This visual inspection covers the general condition of all passenger seats, business class back shells and ottomans, light fittings, meal tables, privacy dividers, soft furnishings, all decorative finishes and seat belts. Any defects, scuffs, gaps and mismatches between mating surfaces are all noted down on a detailed inspection report. The inspection also covers the door vestibule areas, lavatories, sidewall linings, class dividers curtains and window blinds.
Standing (left to right): Maricarmen López and Arturo Searle, Front (left to right): Mariana Rojas, Marcela Ugalde, Carolina Fuertes and Constanza Acuña
Fernanda Toro, LAN’s VP travel experience says that the impeccability inspection is a core element of LAN’s travel experience mission. “We believe that our travel experience adds significant value to our company and is an essential part of our business model along with our people, safety and efficiency.”
When questioned about what set’s LAN apart from their competition Toro says, “We are very proud of South America, proud of our region and we want to bring our region to the world. We provide a reliable travel experience with all the charm of South America. Our vision is to provide the best travel experience within, to and from South America and to be recognised as one of the world’s top 10 airlines.”
“Our purpose of service is that we are people caring for people. We build our services from the attributes associated with our brand. Our passengers told us that in premium business the main attribute they look for is ‘rest’ so we choose the best bed in the market [Sicma Majesty]. Rest isn’t just about sleep, it’s also about disconnecting, so good wine, good food and good entertainment are also very important.”
“We try to achieve the extra ‘wow’ factor with our passengers and give them something unexpected that creates an emotional response so that they remember the airline brand that they were flying on.”
LAN’s impeccability team work to ensure that each aircraft in the fleet meet at least 88% of the inspection requirements. I asked Fuertes why a seemingly arbitrary target of 88% had been set and was told that the original target was 85% but they wanted to, “challenge themselves so raised the bar a bit higher.”
Any inspection findings are ranked in terms of impact to the passenger and the most significant items are then scheduled for maintenance recovery action and/or repair. Passenger impact is decided against a sliding scale of relative importance created through numerous passenger surveys.
This procedure, originally initiated at the Santiago facility, is now also undertaken at LAN’s maintenance facilities in Buenos-Aires, Argentina and Lima’s Jorge Chavez international airport in Peru, with the same attention to detail being paid to regional, short-haul as well as long haul aircraft. Fuertes says, “We have a methodology of continuous improvement so all our inspection findings are tracked across LAN’s fleet and maintenance bases via a comprehensive set of key performance indicators (KPIs).” The next step in LAN’s approach is to predict preventative maintenance that can be undertaken to stop damage happening in the first place.
August 21, 2012 at 12:51 pm
Thanks for the fun post. Inspecting is one thing, but do the faults really get fixed – or cleaned? The U.S. domestic fleet should take a serious lesson here! The appearance and cleanliness of our domestic fleet is, well, it just ‘plane’ sucks! In my opinion, United is probably the worst of the lot. I’ve recently taken several PREMIUM flights for NYC to San Francisco in business class seats, only to be literally horrified at the filth in mt ‘personal space. In one case it was so bad that I asked the lead FA to find me a different seat. (She did; she was as disgusted as I was.) What is it with Amerikan airlines and their airplanes? For the most part, they are FILTHY. They supposedly to a light cleaning at every turn and a ‘deep cleaning’ weekly, but I sure don’t see it. Most of the time, the Big Brand airplanes that I have to fly on are disgustingly FILTHY. Standard buses in major cities are far cleaner. And to add insult to injury, on the long flights with a “J” ticket, they majors still serve semi-farely good food. Who wants to eat in an environment like that? WHen boarding or departing, take a look at the airpane’s galley, where YOUR Food is prepared. If inspected my a state health department, they would be closed down in an instant. Is there a bright side here? Yes! Tke that same galley look on a foreign flag airplane and you will usually see a seriously clean working space from which the FAs can serve usually excellent food. The seats and personal spaces are clean and the floors are clean. Again, for the majority of the U.S. domestic fleet it just ain’t so. I’m TIRED of this crap! If foreign carriers were allowed to provide U.S. point-to-point transportation, ALL of the legacy carriers would be out of business in less than a year. Shame!