About the Client
A mid-sized U.S. airline (regional & short-haul network) asked Nexus for help while reworking its maintenance strategy. They were debating whether to centralize heavy checks, expand in-house MRO capacity, or lock long-term contracts with third-party MROs and parts distributors. With thin margins and costly AOG (aircraft-on-ground) exposure, they needed real, operational insight from people who live this work every day.
The Challenge
Hidden supplier risk
Vendor brochures and price lists looked fine, but the airline didn’t trust surface claims on lead times, qualification speed, and spare-parts availability.
High stakes & limited runway
A single delayed part or failed heavy check could cost hundreds of thousands and disrupt schedules. The team had to decide quickly, before peak season and before existing contracts rolled over.
Regulatory and operational nuance
Differences in FAA vs. foreign regulator acceptance, shop certification, and OEM repair approvals mattered a lot but weren’t visible from proposals.
Our Approach
Precision sourcing & screening
We screened ~30 candidates and proposed a curated pool of 22 relevant experts for the client to choose from: former airline maintenance directors, ex-MRO plant managers, spare-parts distributors, third-party QA leads, and former FAA/EASA compliance officers.
Role-specific interview guides
Each call used a short, structured flow tailored to the expert’s role: operational reliability, part lead times, certification speed, billing/pricing traps, and real examples of failures or successes.
Reference checks & supplier triangulation
For the vendor shortlist the airline was leaning toward, we ran targeted reference conversations with prior customers and procurement heads who had worked with those exact MROs.
Benchmarking & a practical checklist
We produced a simple vendor readiness checklist (spares-stock rules, guaranteed AOG response windows, certification handoffs) and a side-by-side heatmap comparing candidate MROs on reliability, speed, cost transparency, and regulatory readiness.
Results & Impact
Delivered in under three weeks, the work gave the airline hands-on, decision-ready intelligence:
- 20 in-depth expert interviews completed (30+ screened).
- Shortlisted 3 MRO partners with clearly documented trade-offs and one vendor removed from consideration after reference checks raised repeat service-quality issues.
- Operational improvements identified that the airline estimated would reduce AOG days by ~25% through better spare-parts stocking and tighter SLA language.
- Contract leverage: the insights let procurement add milestone-based penalties and faster spares replacement clauses, saving an estimated $800K–$1.2M in expected downtime and contingency costs over the first 24 months.
- Faster decision cycle: the team moved from analysis to contractual negotiations two weeks earlier than planned, avoiding peak-season pricing pressure.
The client described the work as “practical and directly tied to what our ops team needed.” Nexus remains on call to run follow-up checks during onboarding and to validate performance against the checklist during the first year of the contracts.
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