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Factors which affect the decision to either perform maintenance in-house or subcontract it to an outside organization are complex, and range from purely objective calculations of costs and benefits to the subtleties of behavioral opportunism and risk. Thus safety and economics can be highly interrelated when outsourcing is at issue. Using aircraft maintenance in the civil air transport industry as an example, this paper discusses subtle but important economic factors which should be considered when an outsourcing decision is at hand.

This paper presents results of research which considered the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) assertion that the Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) will be an economical alternative to automobile and airline travel, when considering the economic value of a traveler's time, within a range of mid-length trips. To simulate a likely near-term niche for SATS, performance was studied in the corporate aviation environment, using NASA's metric for overall transportation performance. Travel$ense software was used to examine the costs of traveling on two hypothetical SATS aircraft versus automobile costs and airline fares, net the cost of travelers' time, traveling among a sample of 53 city pairs in the continental United States.

This paper summarizes several years of research which considered the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's assertion that the Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) will be an economical alternative to automobile and airline travel, when considering the value of travelers' time. Performance was studied in the corporate aviation environment, using NASA's metric for cost effectiveness. Cost, cost effectiveness, and the sensitivity of cost effectiveness to key independent variables were examined. Analyses shed favorable light on NASA's premise.

This paper is a derivative of a report submitted to NASA which investigated the affordability of Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) aircraft. The initial effort developed a Life Cycle Cost (LCC) / Total Ownership Cost (TOC) model. The model is grounded in practical expertise as well as theories relevant to the affordability of significant and discontinuous technological innovations. Input data were either researched from valid and reputable sources, or where assumptions were needed to be made, were made in the spirit of the NASA vision and using its literature. Thus the perspective maintained throughout this phase of research might be termed “realistically optimistic.” The challenge of making the NASA SATS vision bear fruit is ambitious and imposing, yet NASA has earned a reputation for success in such projects.