Aircraft maintenance: what it costs and how fast it gets dearer

What maintenance is made of

Part of the cost depends on flight hours (engines, components), part on cycles (landing gear, life-limited parts, line maintenance). That is why maintenance per hour is higher on short flights: there are more cycles per hour. The calculator works exactly this way — with two rates.

Why the catalogue is dearer than reality. Engine makers sell engines at around zero or at a loss and earn on spare parts and service: service is 60–75 % of the revenue of the engine divisions of GE, Safran and Rolls-Royce ^4,5; in 2019 Rolls-Royce lost £1.2m on average on every new wide-body engine⁶. Hence the fast rise of parts list prices. But an airline pays for more than parts: there is labour, the airframe, components, discounts and repair instead of replacement — so its costs rise more slowly than the catalogue.

Maintenance cost by aircraft type

Direct maintenance cost, USD per block hour (2025 prices), aircraft about 12 years old; dot — estimate, line — spread between airlines. Orange — young fleet only or little data.

How the rate changes with aircraft age

A new narrow-body costs 0.4–0.6 of the rate of a 12-year-old one: engines and airframe have not yet reached their first heavy work. Over the whole service life the average rate is ×0.90 of the mature rate for narrow-bodies and ×1.15 for regional aircraft.

How maintenance gets dearer over time

The US price index for aircraft repair and maintenance grew 3.0 % a year from 2009 to 2025 (inflation 2.6 %), and 3.5 % over the last 10 years. Sharp list-price increases pass through quickly: in 2023 the index rose 8.4 % December on December, right after CFM raised its prices¹.

Table for the calculation

Direct costs (labour, materials, outside contractors), without overheads. The flight column is the rate × 2.12 h at 1.113 $/EUR (ECB, 2026-10-29), for comparison with the calculator's default. These are US airline costs: in Europe and Asia labour is cheaper, materials are the same.

What we change in the calculator

1. ✓ Built into the calculatorThe Form 41 band next to the default — already in fleet economics (US carriers, 2025): it shows the A320 default is ~25 % below actual costs.
2. ⚑ Mind when entering dataYour own rate — as two numbers. The table rates are 2025 dollars per block hour and already include the cycle part; in the type card maintenance is entered in euros separately per flight hour and per cycle: on short flights the cycle part weighs more. Table rates are direct costs, without overheads. Lease in the calculator excludes maintenance reserves: reserves inside the lease rate would count maintenance twice.
3. ✓ Built into the calculatorThe modelled type rate from this article — the calculator's maintenance default since 10 Nov 2026 for 36 types (at least 8 points in the panel): direct costs, 2025 USD per block hour in euros at the day's rate, a 39 % cycle share at the class reference sector. Types without a rate keep the parametric default.
4. ✓ Built into the calculatorAircraft age — a calculator field: mature rate × the class age curve; empty — the service-life average. Checked on the 2025 fleets with actual ages: Southwest −2 %, Frontier +14 % against Form 41 (ultra-low-cost carriers maintain cheaper than the average carrier); without age Frontier would be +49 %.
5. ✓ Built into the calculatorGrowth over time. The rate grows with the maintenance index, +3 % a year from 2025 to the year of the calculation, not with the catalogue's 6–9 %. ◷ Queued for the calculatorAn “expensive catalogue” scenario — a separate surcharge on the engine part.
6. ✓ Built into the calculatorNew types without US history (A320neo, A319neo, 737 MAX 7 and 10, A330neo, 787-10) — from their predecessor × 0.7: that is how new and old generations of the same age compare in the panel pairs (B38M/B738, B39M/B739, A21N/A321). ◷ Queued for the calculatorA bottom-up estimate from the catalogue with an actual/catalogue factor of 0.55–0.67 (catalogue and lessor reserves are 1.5–2.5 times actual costs) — for types without a predecessor: PD-14, C919.

How it was checked

Rates come from a model on the Form 41 (BTS) panel 1991–2025: type + carrier + age + sector length + run-out before retirement; no rows are dropped, outliers are explained (formula allocation of costs to types, capitalised heavy maintenance, run-out before retirement). Manufacturer economics — annual reports of GE, Safran, Rolls-Royce, RTX, MTU. Every quote in the logs (trace/) was checked by separate agents: of 948, 849 found verbatim, 5 partly, 0 not found, 94 not checked (site did not open).

Full research log — README.md, search map — map.html (in Russian).