LATAM Airlines AOG Case Study: Transforming Aviation Maintenance
This AOG management case study looks at one of the most critical operational problems any airline faces: every aircraft grounded for lack of a spare part means cost, fines, and a direct hit to the flight schedule. That exact challenge, faced by LATAM Airlines, gave rise to one of Agence's longest-running partnerships, resulting in a set of systems that replaced manual spreadsheets with integrated, intelligent processes.
The operational challenge at LATAM Airlines: scale, parts, and manual processes
The scope of the problem starts with the numbers. A commercial aircraft has around 370,000 parts in its makeup. Multiply that complexity by a fleet of more than 330 aircraft, spread across airports in different countries, and it becomes clear why maintenance and spare parts supply require a level of organization that Excel spreadsheets simply can't sustain.
Before partnering with Agence, most of LATAM's critical processes were handled manually, with systems that didn't talk to each other. The result was predictable: rework, miscommunication between departments, and, above all, significant financial impact, mainly from the fines applied whenever an aircraft stayed in AOG (Aircraft on Ground, meaning an aircraft grounded due to unavailable maintenance) longer than expected. Agence's work began in the airline's Kaizen department, the team responsible for mapping process bottlenecks and vulnerabilities, which kicked off a consulting engagement before any piece of technology was ever delivered.
How Agence's methodology works for aviation digital transformation projects
Every project built for LATAM followed the same methodology, combining Lean, Design Thinking, and Scrum frameworks across four stages:
- Needs analysis: identifying the problem, investigating the root cause, and sketching an MVP.
- Prototype: validation with the client and with the operation's Key Users, adjusting based on feedback received.
- Build: construction, testing, and certification of the solution.
- Rollout: going live, monitoring, and ongoing support.
This consulting and prototyping process is what allowed each system to be designed around LATAM's actual operational reality, instead of a generic software model forced onto a sector as specific as aviation.
AOG Portal Software: centralizing aircraft on ground resolution
The most emblematic project of the partnership is the AOG management portal. Back in 2013, LATAM struggled with low efficiency in resolving AOG cases, which directly affected the fines generated by airports. The aircraft spare parts supply chain was controlled through isolated spreadsheets, with no integration between the teams involved, creating a decentralized environment marked by poor communication and a high error rate.
Agence structured the solution around three pillars: an integrated management portal that centralizes communication across every step of the aircraft on ground process, from the initial maintenance alert to the aircraft's release; document standardization, which sped up the search for and approval of purchases; and a traceability and intelligence module that started calculating the best delivery routes for parts, weighing speed, cost, or availability as needed.
With the portal in place, every team gained full visibility into the status of each step, which standardized monitoring and streamlined the search for parts, directly reducing aircraft downtime.
This kind of airline maintenance automation is what allowed LATAM to automate procurement, gain confidence in decision making, and reduce AOG time through more strategic purchasing.
Maint Control, Hit List, and CASS: other systems that keep the operation running
The same consulting philosophy repeated itself across three other projects. Maint Control was built to monitor, in real time, the maintenance work carried out by technicians across different shifts, making it possible to quickly escalate issues that used to get stuck in informal communication between work groups.
The Hit List system was born out of the difficulty of monitoring cabin condition across a fleet of more than 330 aircraft in constant route rotation. It standardized monthly inspections, generating KPIs for the percentage of fault free elements and reports that directly support the Maintenance and Product teams.
The CASS (Continuous Analysis and Surveillance System) was created to consolidate delay cases and AOG management plans from any LATAM subsidiary, replacing manual spreadsheet uploads with a consolidated process that supports medium term action plans aimed at reducing recurring errors. Projects like these, which demand custom, integrated systems, usually rely on robust web development capable of connecting teams that used to operate in isolation.
Results and lessons from the case for other companies in the sector
By replacing isolated spreadsheets with centralized, standardized platforms, the partnership between Agence and LATAM helped reduce aircraft downtime and, as a result, exposure to airport fines, along with concrete gains in operational efficiency, cross-team communication, and fewer process errors. The data generated by the systems themselves, such as delivery routes, cabin KPIs, and delay history, now feeds more strategic decisions across the airline.
The core lesson for operations, maintenance, IT, and supply chain managers at other airlines or complex logistics companies is that digital transformation in this sector rarely starts with technology itself. It starts with truly understanding the manual process that is generating the cost, and only then, working alongside the people who run day to day operations, designing a system that solves the real problem. That's the same reasoning behind today's artificial intelligence projects applied to predictive maintenance and the management of critical operations.
If your company is facing similar challenges with manual processes, fragmented systems, or difficulty measuring the operational impact of critical decisions, talk to the Agence team and see how a consulting driven approach could apply to your own context.
