What ramp damage costs, and why a timestamped record matters.

The scale of the problem

The Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) has estimated that ramp accidents cost major airlines worldwide at least US$10 billion a year, with about 27,000 ramp accidents and incidents a year, roughly one for every 1,000 departures. Those figures come from FSF's Ground Accident Prevention (GAP) initiative and were reported in 2012. The article itself noted they were more than five years old and had not been updated, so treat them as indicative, not current.

What practitioners point to

The same article cites causes including time pressure from quick turnarounds, congestion and frequent gate changes, training gaps, night-time cargo operations with high staff turnover, and damage to composite surfaces that may be hard to see after an impact. One airline safety specialist is quoted arguing that investigations often stop at blaming the individual.

Why the record matters

This section is ThruFly's view, not a finding from the source. When a damage report or a delay is reviewed, the questions are the same: what was done, by whom, in what order, and when. Where the answer is rebuilt from radio calls and memory, it is harder to look past the individual to the process. A timestamped record captured as the work happens is designed to make that review faster and fairer, and it gives stations something to measure and improve. That is the problem ThruFly is built around.

ThruFly is pre-pilot and makes no claim about reducing damage. A pilot would measure what changes at one station, with metrics agreed in advance.

Sources

• Mario Pierobon, "Covering the Ground," AeroSafety World, Flight Safety Foundation, August 2012. flightsafety.org