I can see why the bean counters do these sums & come up with tangible figures that drive cost savings as they multiply what appears piddly stuff all per airframe across the whole fleet over a financial year & bingo numbers that makes a bean counter smile:-)
Trouble is to cut costs & lets face it every industry is cutting costs some by way of less employees or ceasing Ops (Ford in Geelong for Eg) there are only a few avenues for the bean counters to work with & that is the human element to the base costs of a product & a more efficient use of that product.
The human element is malleable by way of work place/product efficiencies producing more for the same effort/wages cost. We are constantly seeing how the bean counters are trying to make the machine work more efficiently.
Now right or wrong there is merit in some of this (as if there wasn't then no one would have a job) but as we all are saying here at what cost? Changing CI for Eg in a planes FMGC might be all well & good on paper for the bean counters but one storm, some holding by ATC (BN perfect Eg) a diversion as is the core subject here in this thread or even a request for speeding up can erase what small saving was going to be gained for that particular flight in the first place.
The single biggest problem to all this is safety & that as we known comes at a cost. Commercialism the very reason why we have transport planes in the first place is the overriding factor & the exact reason as to why these couple of A/C ended up in this situation is all based on cost.
The balance to safety & commercialism if bloody tenuous that's for sure!
To protect the man within the machine first the man has to be placed ahead of the machine, that won't happen as man costs, the machine produces money.
Solution?...............fill in the spaces knock yourselves out but for a start stupidly cheap airfares is where it all started I believe!
Wmk2