Operating costs are not that easy to determine because they are to be calculated according to each and every environment (country).
Operating Costs are based on these:
1) Airplane Related Operating Cost (AROC);
2) LIFE-CYCLE COST (LCC) CATEGORIES
3) Systems Related Operating Cost (SROC).
Airplane Related Operating Cost (AROC)
This comprises on two major parts CAPITAL COSTS and CASH AIRPLANE RELATED OPERATING COSTS.
Capital Cost is the price to be paid which can be done upfront or through financing, it also includes Insurance and Depreciation.
CASH AIRPLANE RELATED OPERATING COSTS includes Crew, Fuel, Maintenance, Landing, Ground Handling, GPE Depreciation, GPE Maintenance Control & Communications.
Non-Recurring Cost
Cost incurred one time only:
-Engineering
- Airframe design/analysis
- Configuration control
- Systems engineering Tooling
- Design of tools and fixtures
- Fabrication of tools and fixtures Other
- Development support
- Flight testing
Recurring Cost
Cost incurred per unit:
Labor
- Fabrication
- Assembly
- Integration Material to manufacture
- Raw material
- Purchased outside production
- Purchased equipment Production support
- QA
- Production tooling support
- Engineering support
Cost Modeling
• Aircraft is broken down into modules – Inner wing, outer wing, …
– Modules are classified by type
• Wing, Empennage, Fuselage, …
• Cost per pound specified for each module type
– Calibrated from existing cost models
– Modified by other factors
• Learning effects
• Commonality effects
• Assembly & Integration: a separate “module”
• 2 cost categories: development & manufacturing Production run: a collection of modules
LIFE-CYCLE COST CATEGORIES
Life-cycle cost is defined as the sum of four major cost categories:
(1) Research and development costs;
(2) Investment costs, consisting of procurement, military construction, and acquisition-related operations and maintenance (O&M) associated with the production and deployment activities;
(3) O&S costs; and
(4) Disposal costs.
Hence it can vary for the same aircraft in two different environments i.e if F-16’s are flown by both PAF and PN. For PN the operating cost would be higher as compared to PAF because of the requirement.
