Case Study: A change for the better with documents at Spirit Airlines

Author: Dan Cottrell, Senior Manager Fleet Asset Management, Spirit Airlines | Stephen Morrison, Sr. Manager of Aircraft Records and Records Compliance, Spirit Airlines

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Dan Cottrell, Senior Manager Fleet Asset Management and Stephen Morrison, Sr. Manager of Aircraft Records and Records Compliance, both at Spirit Airlines share the transition to an electronic records solution, how it went and what has been gained.

SPIRIT AIRLINES

Spirit Airlines was founded in 1990 and now flies to destinations across the United States, Central America and northern South America, and is the number one provider in the Caribbean area for the Americas. We fly into around 65 cities give or take a few that are seasonal operations. At the time of writing, the fleet comprised 211 aircraft, all from the Airbus A320, family with A321s and A320neo and ceo types: we are the largest user of the neos in North and South America and third largest user of neo engines in the world. We are also one of the fastest growing airlines at about 17 percent a year.

LEGACY DOCUMENT PROCESSES AND PAIN POINTS

Before we got flydocs Digital Records Management in 2016, we didn’t have an electronic records system. We had archives with visuals, PDFs and that sort of thing, but it was all very much hard copy paper prior to flydocs. The problem with paper records is that they need to be processed manually which entails manhours and risks inaccuracies through human error. Paper also requires storage space, plus finding something that you need in a paper file is a task in itself. With a growing fleet and plans for further growth in the future, paper was not the ideal way to keep records. That was a real pain point, especially with lease returns.

THE BUSINESS CASE FOR IMPLEMENTING FLYDOCS

We had been approached by several records management solution providers, including flydocs. Then, having done the research and cost analysis to see which product would be best for Spirit Airlines, flydocs Digital Records Management (DRM) came out as the winner and we have been working very closely with flydocs ever since for our electronic records. At the time, we were doing two lease returns, and flydocs assisted us with some of the record reviews as part of that project. We weren’t doing them previously, but it’s something we do now after learning from the process. Since then, our records management process has evolved tremendously to where it is now as part of our business model on aircraft sales and lease returns, as well as maintenance records, as you can see in figure 1.

Figure 1

We’ve added flydocs DRM to a lot more processes and that has helped us, including inducting new aircraft where new aircraft induction packs are downloaded from Airbus and uploaded straight into flydocs DRM.

THE IMPLEMENTATION

flydocs DRM was already being implemented when we (Dan & Stephen) started with Spirit and the airline was primarily looking for a records archive. But then, as it continued to develop, we realized there was a lot more that flydocs had to offer with researching the records. In fact, for a year throughout late 2015 and 2016, there were people at our facilities in Fort Lauderdale and Miramar scanning records into flydocs in order to make the transition; it was a long process. The biggest obstacle was the number of records that were being scanned, and the constant reviewing and triple checking documents, before going back to make sure that all the documents had been filed properly. Fortunately, the flydocs team showed us their best practices, which gave our people an understanding of how to work with the new solution. At that time, there were only 50 or 60 aircraft in the Spirit fleet but we knew we were going to grow, starting with inducting aircraft from the 100 aircraft order that we then had in place with Airbus. Today, all of those aircraft records are on flydocs DRM from beginning to end.

FLYDOCS IN SPIRIT AIRLINES

For Stephen’s team, the way flydocs DRM helps is in ensuring our research is really fast. Using the search feature, it’ll find the document you’re looking for among thousands of others in seconds. By following rules and processes, plus using the helpful filter options, it addresses the biggest pain point in that we don’t have to research documents in boxes anymore, or pull archives from the archive location where the boxes have been stored: it’s a much faster process to find documents that we require. Whether they’ve been requested by the FAA or from engineering, we can quickly search and find that information. Having all our work packages and log pages in one place also helps us to organize and reconcile them through flydocs DRM. We run a report every month that helps us to know what documents we received, as far as log pages and the work packages are concerned. We audit those through flydocs DRM as well; it really is a great tool.

For third parties that we work with, they’re sometimes reluctant at first to engage with a new platform that they haven’t used before. However, we don’t give them a choice; we tell them it’s way we handle lease returns and it is how we’re going to plan in the future. We do, of course, give them training and education on how to use flydocs DRM, show them how to search, how to pull up reports and how to use delivery bibles. They might take a little bit of time to understand it, but they get there.

As far as the implementation requiring any process changes within Spirit Airlines was concerned, either to make it work and/or to exploit some of the new opportunities that it made possible, obviously there were changes. Because we had to start scanning everything, we had to install high speed scanners in various locations. We also had to, over a period of time, start making the huge transition to go completely electronic. It was a big hurdle because it added additional processes, but long term we knew that it would reduce the workload, as well as improve accuracy and quality.

We had to get flydocs officially approved with the FAA. As the first flydocs user in the United States, it understandably took a little bit of effort and planning. After flydocs was implemented, we ran it in parallel with our paper hard copy records for a period of time before the FAA signed off on the process itself.

Because of flydocs, one great thing that we can do so much more easily and accurately is lease returns, which we couldn’t do so well before. flydocs has given us a big advantage in the speed of searching records and creating the reports that have to be done from TRAX – we can do it all in flydocs. We use TRAX for the data and flydocs for the presentation of lease return reports or sales reports. That’s another advantage – so much so that we’reworking on integrating TRAX and flydocs.

WORKING WITH FLYDOCS AND TRAINING

flydocs visited Spirit Airlines from their United Kingdom base and did training for weeks at a time. We ran multiple technicians and production controllers through the training, as well as supervisors and leads, and then we ran all the records personnel and ourselves through it. There was a lot of training during that initial year while flydocs were here supporting us with scanning, to make sure everybody understood what items had to be scanned, then how to scan and process them. In fact, they’ve always been good with us if we need additional training or help. They’re spot on with answering our questions or giving us extra training when needed. Some of that training has been done in person, but most is now done online.

Users find flydocs easy to work with once they understand how to use it and are over the learning curve. As we’ve already stated above, some people were reluctant to learn a different system from what they had been used to. Once they understand it, it’s really productive especially when they consider that the alternative would be – going to dig through boxes. That creates a good incentive to learn.

As already mentioned, we ran the system in parallel with our old paper-based processes for a while, and we also had it up and running prior to getting approval from the FAA, which finally was agreed in July 2020. It took us a little while to bring the FAA on board with electronic record keeping as we were one of the first to introduce it in the United States, but we got there. Internally, we had to rewrite some processes and rewrite our Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to ensure that the flydocs process was documented in our SOPs. We also added flydocs to our manuals including the General Maintenance Manual (GMM) – there’s actually a flydocs section in the GMM now which is good.

LESSONS LEARNED AND GAINS MADE

Departments that were involved in the implementation included Quality Assurance/ Quality Control, Records, Tech Ops, Fleet Management and Maintenance Control. There were a lot of different Tech Ops departments involved and we also brought in Safety. In truth, that was good and bad: because we got so many people involved, they all wanted their own directions and priorities which didn’t work out well. We were trying to do a lot of things before we were ready for everything, a case of getting the cart before the horse. In the end, Records took control and said, ‘this is the way we’re going to do it because this is an archive system and so we need to be in control of it’. We learned that there are times in a project when democracy is not the ideal way to get things done, someone has to take the lead. Now we’re in a much better position where those other groups do have some say but they understand it better and work with us.

In other lessons learned, we would probably want more commitment from some of our other departments to use flydocs more thoroughly. Because they’re still on shared drives, they’re concerned about security – although we did emphasize to them that material in flydocs is protected by robust security measures, encompassing both technical and organizational security controls, and the use of the latest security tools. Again, it’s partially about getting people to change and that’s something that needs to be addressed on our side, not on flydocs side. In truth, we’ve never been involved with a project of any sort when change management hasn’t been a big issue. It’s about bringing the people along with you, as we’re sure readers already understand.

When it comes to measurable results, we can say without doubt, that when we do lease returns and similar processes, it is less costly and easier when we use flydocs DRM. By the time we get somebody trained to look at the material and do what is needed in a lease return, even though they do not have previous experience with flydocs, by around two weeks into their training, they can go ahead and run with the project in flydocs DRM. There have also been some large projects that flydocs Digital Engineering Services have done for us.  Considering we get handed projects at short notice, it has often helped us tremendously with our airline operation to partner with flydocs.

Furthermore, we’re doing a lease return project now with 23 airplanes. It was an ad hoc project that came upon us and flydocs stepped up, working with us to get all those records taken care of and passed along. The time taken on doing that without flydocs would have been overwhelming if we had to do it ourselves at such short notice. But flydocs supported us to process them really fast which has been a genuine gain for us.

In fact, flydocs has been a really big help for us by enabling us to have the resource to do everything necessary, simply because they’ve taken it on, and they have been able to add real value in that work. In short, we really appreciate being able to work with flydocs on lease returns and aircraft sales. In addition to that, one of the advantages we have gained from a record standpoint is the efficiency, from reducing our research times and being able to run reports to reconciling log pages. We audit directly in flydocs DRM after the upload and approve the documents there. It’s been really good for efficiency for our team and for Spirit Airlines.

NEXT STEPS AND THE FUTURE

The biggest thing we’re trying to do right now, and we’re very close, is integration, where we get the work packages fed directly into flydocs DRM. We have a project called eMobility within TRAX, and we’re looking at how we can tie that with flydocs directly which we hope to complete in six months from the time of writing. This will help us tremendously in having live reports – especially on matters such as aircraft utilization. That’s something that we’ve been working toward for a long time, getting those daily reports for lessors to be able to look at. The idea is that there will be a daily update with the latest and best information over the last 24 to 48 hours which will be very good.

Overall, the experience of moving to flydocs has been very good for Spirit Airlines and we have enjoyed some great and important gains from using the Digital Records Management solution. We hope that reaching out in this article and sharing our experience will be useful for readers who are considering a similar development and change.