The 25 Minutes Turnaround

By Maria on Oct 24, 2008 | In Airport Stories | 9 comments »

As the aeroplane curved into the parking bay and a block of chock saddled to the front tires, the clock starts ticking for the 25 minutes turnaround.

25 Minutes Turnaround means, it takes 25 minutes for an aircraft from the moment of arrival to depart to the next destination.

It's one of the practice of AirAsia berhad in order to operate as Low Cost Carrier.

What actually happen in the 25 minutes time?

First, you will hear the boarding announcement being made for your departure.

As people queue for boarding, arrival passengers begin to disembark from the plane.
At the same moment, "new" set of pilots and cabin crews will get onto the aircraft and the previous set will step down.

The "new" set of cabin crews for your destination on the way to the parking bay.

The cargo that just arrived is offloaded and your luggage along with the other passengers' will be lifted onto the cargo hold.
And if you have ordered Snack Attack for your meal on board, your orders are also being lifted by the special Snack Attack delivery truck.

And boarding begins.

All these actions and activities happen in the first 15 minutes of the 25 minutes turnaround.

At 10 minutes before departure, the gates are close for boarding.
Pilots finalizes the load sheet and as airplane doors are close, get the engines ready for the next destination.

Au revoir !!!!!!

Tags: 25 minutes turnaround, airasia, aircraft, boarding, cabin crews, destination, low cost carrier, pilots, snack attack

9 comments

10/24/08, 22:34

Su Juin wrote:

Awesome!The crew does a quick and wonderful job

10/26/08, 01:42

Phoek Paulus wrote:

Maria, Does AirAsia always put a new 'set' pilots and cabin crew for every flight? or depends on the flight time?
thank's

10/29/08, 01:43

Maria wrote:

Not every flight has change of crew. Yes,depending on the flight hours, new sets of crew will replace the earlier ones. Its a common sight to see the new sets waiting for their flights at the departure hall.

Yes, everybody work fast and very serious to achieve the 25 minutes turnaround. But as safety is number one priority, we do consider a lot of safety factors during boarding.

12/28/08, 22:36

Edmund wrote:

That's great! In that way, Air Asia could afford to provide affordable airfare to its clients and I hope it maintains it's rank as the leading budget airline in Asia, and hopefully to the whole world.

Moving people to destinations on time. Keep it up!

01/05/09, 21:56

Anonymous wrote:

Not until this article is posted, never am i aware of the 25 minutes turn around .. useful info indeed !!

01/06/09, 14:21

Maria wrote:

If you notice, on your boarding pass ...there's a print that says boarding 30 minutes before departure time....that's the 25 minutes turnaround thing ... plus gate closes 10 minutes before departure .. that's when we dont accept anymore passanger to board the plane ..bcoz the aircraft door will be close already.

and yess, it would be wonderful to see all planes leaving on time

08/05/09, 00:19

Anonymous wrote:

So, the 15 minutes including cleaning the plane?

And, I think the pilots need time to check the aircraft right?

08/05/09, 16:43

Hare wrote:

Thanks Maria, great information!

08/06/09, 09:18

Ramnan wrote:

I think the 25 minutes turn-around time is hard to achieve because of Air Asia passengers ... and not the airline.

Whenever I fly Air Asia, I almost always notice many passengers with more than one bulky piece of carry on luggage. They probably do this to evade the various charges imposed on checked luggage.

Ground staff, on the other hand never appear to enforce the stringent carry on baggage rules, especially with regard to number, size and weight.

The presence of these large and multiple pieces of carry on luggage causes a big commotion during passnger embarkation and disembarkation.

And this, in my humble opinion, is the mother of all Air Asia flight delays.

I also hope these unweighed access baggage do not significantly affect the calculation of take off rotation speed (my knowledge on this matter is rather shallow), which may inadvertently lead to tail strike incidents. Perhaps the experts (pilot bloggers) can advise us on the probability of such incidents.

- Ramnan

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