How British Airways saved £600,000 cleaning loos
“Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.”
When it comes to flying, weight is the enemy.
A heavier plane requires more fuel, more power, and a stiffer structure.
It’s the reason why aircraft manufacturers and airlines go to great lengths to reduce mass without sacrificing comfort and safety.
Take British Airways, for example.
When they launched a staff suggestion scheme to reduce costs, they probably weren’t expecting a response about toilet pipes.
A maintenance employee noticed that the toilet pipes on the planes were accumulating heavy scale and mineral deposits.
His suggestion was to descale the pipes more frequently to reduce the aircraft’s weight.
The result?
The de-scaling of the pipes saved the airline approximately £600,000 a year in fuel costs.
But that’s not all.
More than 200 ideas were submitted, leading to overall savings of £20 million.
Which shows that the best ideas often come from the bottom up rather than the top down.
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