Industry Insight
AOG Logistics: How to Move a Grounded Aircraft's Part in Hours, Not Days
An aircraft on ground costs airlines thousands per hour. What AOG logistics really takes: customs, purge certificates, tool returns and 24/7 response.
Industry Insight
An aircraft on ground costs airlines thousands per hour. What AOG logistics really takes: customs, purge certificates, tool returns and 24/7 response.
An aircraft on the ground earns nothing. It still costs fuel contracts, crew hours, rebooked passengers and lease payments.
The industry has a name for this moment: AOG, Aircraft on Ground. It means an aircraft is temporarily unairworthy and cannot fly until a part is replaced or a repair is signed off. Boeing's long-standing industry benchmark puts an AOG at $10,000 to $20,000 for a 1 to 2 hour event, and up to $150,000 per hour depending on aircraft type and route. No newer public estimate has replaced it, and the inputs have only risen since: IATA reports that aircraft lease rates alone are up 20 to 30% since 2019.
That is why AOG logistics is its own discipline. Not faster freight. A different kind of freight.
AOG events are not new. What has changed is how little slack the system has left.
In June 2026, IATA reported that the aircraft order backlog has passed 18,000 and the average fleet age has reached a record 15.2 years. Older aircraft need more maintenance, more often. New aircraft that should replace them are years late.
Engines are the sharpest pinch point. At the end of October 2025, about one third of all aircraft powered by Pratt & Whitney's geared turbofan engines were in storage, as the engine maker worked through an inspection and repair program.
The cost is already visible. IATA and Oliver Wyman estimated that supply chain failures cost airlines more than $11 billion in 2025, including:
| Cost to airlines | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Additional maintenance costs | $3.1 billion |
| Extra engine leasing costs | $2.6 billion |
| Surplus inventory holding costs | $1.4 billion |
When spare parts are scarce and fleets are older, every grounded aircraft waits longer for the one part that frees it. Transport becomes the last variable an airline can still control.
The imbalance runs deep. Billions in stock can sit idle while the one part an operator needs is missing. As we covered in our look at the defense ramp-up, Airbus has had finished jets parked for months, waiting for engines.
AOG cargo is wider than most people expect. Typical shipments include:
The range is the first challenge. One request is a small box that fits on a passenger seat. The next is an oversized engine on a dedicated stand. The value can be extreme: shipments worth several million US dollars are routine, and single consignments can reach $10 million.
From urgent aerospace shipments handled across the Redspher Group for a European national airline, five requirements come up again and again.
In AOG, the clock starts at the inquiry, not at the booking. A realistic benchmark for a well run operation is a pickup organized about 90 minutes after the request.
That speed is not achieved by working harder in the moment. It comes from preparation: a qualified carrier base already in place, digital booking processes, and no time lost chasing quotes by email.
Aviation does not stop on Friday evening. AOG inquiries arrive on weekends and public holidays, and they carry the same urgency as a Tuesday morning request.
A transport partner who is only reachable in office hours is not an AOG partner. Ask who answers at 23:00 on a Saturday, and what they can actually book at that hour.
Many of Europe's major repair and maintenance providers are located in Great Britain and Ireland. Ireland alone accounts for 65% of the global aircraft leasing market, which keeps much of the aftermarket concentrated there.
For an airline outside the EU, that means most AOG shipments cross at least one customs border, and often two. Since Brexit, a part travelling by road from the UK crosses the EU before reaching its destination.
One tool helps here. The UK, Serbia and all EU member states are contracting parties of the Common Transit Convention. That allows a shipment to cross the EU under one transit procedure, with customs clearance at its destination rather than at the point where it enters the EU. Prepared documents are the difference between a truck that keeps rolling and one that waits at a border post.
Every part also needs its airworthiness paperwork. An EASA Form 1 or FAA Form 8130-3 must travel with the component. Without it, the part cannot legally be installed, no matter how fast it arrived.
Some engines cross oceans. Moving an aircraft engine from Europe to a repair shop in the United States usually means air freight, often as one leg of a multimodal transport chain: road to the airport, air across the Atlantic, road to the shop.
Before an engine can fly as cargo, it must be drained and purged of fuel and other hazardous materials. A purge certificate formally confirms that this has been done. Without it, the engine is treated as dangerous goods, which costs significantly more to ship. With it, the shipment is certified as not dangerous goods and can move as general cargo.
The practical lesson: request the purge certificate from the shop at the same time you request the transport. Not after.
This is the requirement most planners miss.
Specialized maintenance tools are often leased from another repair shop for a daily rental fee. The outbound trip is urgent because the aircraft is waiting. The return trip is urgent because every extra day costs money.
A typical loan lasts one or two days. That means the AOG shipment is really a round trip, and the return should be booked when the outbound is booked. For tools that cross borders repeatedly, an ATA Carnet can simplify temporary admission. Both the UK and Serbia accept them, but they must be arranged in advance.
AOG is aviation's version of a production line stopping. Automotive calls it "line down." Manufacturing calls it an emergency shipment.
The logic is the same: it is exception management at its most extreme. It is also one reason air freight is becoming a strategic mode, not a last resort: the cost of a stopped line often exceeds the cost of moving fast.
Three principles transfer directly:
This is where structured booking pays off. When urgent freight runs on email and phone calls, every request starts from zero. Platforms like Easy4Pro centralize carrier rates, documents and shipment status in one place, so an urgent request can be booked without a round of calls.
AOG logistics is not about the fastest vehicle. It is about removing every delay that is not the journey itself: the quote, the paperwork, the weekend gap, the forgotten return.
Airlines that treat urgent freight as a planned process, not an improvised one, get aircraft back in the air sooner. The same is true for any operation where one missing part stops everything.
If your team handles urgent or high value shipments and wants to compare notes on how to structure them, talk to the Easy4Pro team.