Estimating Airline Maintenance Costs

Here are the results of an ad-hoc analysis of airline maintenance costs for 2011 using data from the Bureau of Transportation Analysis (RITA, Schedule P-5.2). Maintenance costs includes airframe (52251 and 52461) and engines (52252 and 52462);  these data were regressed on Total Aircraft Airborne Hours(z6500) and gallons of aircraft fuel (51451).  All data in thousands. 

The results suggests marginal costs of $22.50 per hour of flight time, and $0.201 per gallon of fuel.