American Hopes New Coffee Makers Will Perk Up Punctuality
Jackie Reddy July 21, 2016
It may seem like small beans, but malfunctioning coffee makers are a consistent cause of delays across American’s fleet.
American Airlines has a grinding problem. Robert Isom, American’s chief of operations, recently said in a company podcast that an “inordinate amount of coffee maker problems” are causing flight delays.
While a flight may be delayed by just a few minutes because of a malfunctioning coffee maker, when these individual delays are multiplied across a fleet, this minor problem becomes a major issue. Time, of course, is money, and nowhere is this truer than in the airline industry.
Isom is well aware of this. Prior to American’s merger with US Airways, as chief operating officer of the latter carrier, he ensured that it had one of the most punctual take-off performance records in the industry. This means achieving take-off within 15 minutes of the scheduled departure time.
According to figures released by the U.S. Department of Transportation, for the first quarter of 2016, 83 percent of American Airlines flights took off within that 15-minute window. This put the carrier just above the 81 percent achieved by United Airlines and right under Delta Air Lines’ 86 percent.
In his quest for punctuality, Isom is examining how delays caused by small technical issues are impacting overall performance. For example, spills on fabric seats used to mean the replacement of an entire seat cushion and therefore a delay. Isom has solved this by increasing the use of synthetic leather seat covers, which simply need to be wiped down.
However, faulty onboard coffee makers, which are specially designed for use in galleys and need to be approved by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), are a tougher challenge. Many planes do carry spares, but these too can break, and while an aircraft can depart without a working coffee maker, the water and power connections to the device need to be cut before take-off.
In addition to a delay, this would, of course, mean no coffee.
American is currently working with manufacturer B/E Aerospace to replace malfunctioning coffee makers. It hopes that these efforts will go a long way toward improving punctuality and, most importantly, will ensure that all passengers get their caffeine fix.
[Photo: Huffington Post]
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Considering the quality of the coffee these things spit out, I prefer they remain broken.
Sounds like a "hard water" issue (coming from a "hard water" location), in which minerals from the water in the airplane's reservoir would ultimately plug the coffeemaker. The coffeemakers builders should ask help from either smaller coffee roasters (who know how to deliver the brew properly) or from water purifier makers (how to purify the drinking water without adding much weight to the planes).
Lengthier article in the NY Times includes "Even the water is complicated in an airliner and can contribute to breakdowns. Marcos Jimenez, an engineer at Zodiac Aerospace who has developed patented coffee-maker technology, said there were two main types of machines: those that use water from an airplane’s water reservoir, and those that require a flight attendant to pour filtered, bottled water into the machine." Which airlines use filtered, bottled water?
1. Shoot the current breed of coffee makers to put them and us out of our common misery. 2. I find it almost incredible that modern technology, capable of so much, has managed so little, when it comes to brewing decent coffee whilst airborne. After all, I've consumed plenty of decent coffee brewed at 7,000 altitude (the common level of pressurization) and above, even though the 'thin" air reduces the boiling point of water, if coffee drinkers high in the Rockies, Alps, Andes, Himalayas, and even the persnickedy Californenos who camp in Yosemite can brew good coffee, why can't the tech-gurus of Boeing and Airbus and their captive minions/suppliers solve the ancient problem. By Golly, if the Lone Eagle could carry a good thermos winging his way across to see the verdant green pastures of Ireland, we ought to be able to demand a spoon-floater (in a real mug, not adulterated by Styro-beadlets) on our routine air jaunts.