AOG Requests Are Won in Minutes, Not Hours

It’s 2:40 on a Sunday morning. An operator’s maintenance control sends a request: aircraft on ground at an outstation, one part number, overhauled or serviceable, release paperwork required, need it on the first flight out. The same email goes to a dozen suppliers.

You have one on the shelf. It’s overhauled, the paperwork is in a folder in the office, and the folder has been checked. Nobody reads the request until 7:30. By then the operator has a unit on a counter-to-counter shipment from a supplier who answered at 3:05.

That pattern repeats across the week, mostly where nobody counts it. The unit was right. The paperwork was right. The answer was four hours late.

I’ll say clearly where I stand. I’ve never worked in a stores department, run a quality system or signed anything that releases a part. I spent almost 18 years running a digital agency, Infographic World, and now I use AI to fix real problems inside businesses. What I understand is the path a request takes through an office, and the places it waits. An AOG request waits in a lot of places, and every one of them is costed by the hour on somebody else’s ramp.

Where the hours go on an AOG request

The quote itself is short. Getting to it is where the time goes.

• Seeing it. Requests come in by email, through marketplaces, by phone and by text, often outside office hours. The first delay is simply that nobody is looking.
• Reading it. Part number, any interchangeable numbers the buyer lists, condition required, paperwork required, quantity, ship-to, and the deadline.
• Checking the shelf. Which unit you hold, if any, with its condition, serial number and physical location.
• Checking the paperwork status. Is the release document for that serial on file? Is it scanned, legible and matched to the unit? Is there trace the buyer asked for? Is anything on hold?
• Asking quality. Anything unusual needs a look from someone authorized to make that call.
• Writing the quote. Price, condition, paperwork, lead time, shipping cutoff, all stated in a way a maintenance controller can act on at 3 AM.

None of these steps is slow on its own. Strung together, by a person who has to wake up first, they add up to hours.

What the AI-assisted version looks like

It reads the request the moment it lands

The first step watches every channel and reads each request as it arrives. It pulls out the part number, condition, paperwork requirement, quantity, destination and deadline, and marks it AOG when the request says so.

It checks stock and paperwork status

For each matching unit, it pulls condition, serial number, location and the documents on file for that serial. It checks that the documents exist, that the serial numbers match, and that nothing is flagged or on hold.

This is a records check, not a judgment. The system can tell you a document is missing or that two serial numbers don’t agree. It can’t tell you what a document permits or whether a part is fit for the buyer’s use. Your quality system decides that, every time.

It drafts the quote with condition and paperwork stated plainly

If the records are clean and the unit matches what the buyer asked for, the system drafts a quote that says exactly what the unit is, which documents come with it, and how fast it can ship. Plain words, no ambiguity.

It flags anything for quality

A serial mismatch, a missing document, a buyer asking for paperwork the unit doesn’t carry, a part with history worth a second look. Those don’t get a draft quote. They get routed to quality with the details attached.

It wakes the right person

At 2:40 on a Sunday, the on-call person gets a message with the draft already prepared. They review it, set the price, and send. Four hours can become fifteen minutes.

Run the numbers

The formula in words: AOG requests per week that match a unit you hold, times the change in win rate that comes from answering faster, times average margin per AOG order, times the weeks in a year.

Say, for the sake of the math, you see 15 AOG requests a week where you hold a matching unit. Today you win 10 percent of them, so 1.5 orders a week. These are made-up numbers, not industry figures. Now say, also made up, that answering within 15 minutes around the clock moves that to 20 percent, or 3 orders a week.

If an average AOG order brings $2,000 of margin in this example, that’s 1.5 extra orders a week, or $3,000. Over 50 weeks it’s $150,000 a year, from units you already had on the shelf.

To run it for real, pull three numbers from your own business:

1. AOG requests per week over the last quarter where you held a matching unit.
2. Your win rate on those, split by how fast you answered. Under 30 minutes against over two hours is a good first cut.
3. Average margin on AOG orders.

If the fast answers don’t win more often than the slow ones in your own history, the math says spend your effort somewhere else. That’s worth knowing too.

Picture a Monday, before and after

This scene is made up.

Before. Over the weekend, six AOG requests arrived for parts you stock. Monday at 7:30 the first person in reads them in order. Two units have paperwork in the office and get quoted by nine. The buyers have already ordered. One unit’s document can’t be found until 10:15. The other three were never real matches once someone read the condition required.

After. The same weekend. Each request was read on arrival. Two got draft quotes and the on-call person sent them within twenty minutes, nights included. One was routed to quality on Saturday with a note: the serial on the scanned document doesn’t match the unit record. Quality resolved it Monday morning. Three were set aside as condition mismatches, with a polite reply drafted for each.

What has to be in place first

• A stock record for every serialized unit with condition, location and serial number, kept current.
• The documents for each unit scanned, legible and linked to its serial in the system. This is the single biggest piece, and it pays off even without AI.
• A written rule from your quality system on what paperwork you’ll quote at each condition, so the system knows when to draft and when to route.
• An on-call rotation that someone actually answers.
• Pricing guidance for AOG requests set by the owner, so the person on call isn’t deciding margin half asleep.

Guardrails worth keeping

• The quality system decides airworthiness questions. The system checks records and routes. It never decides what a document means or whether a part is fit to sell.
• Never quote a condition or paperwork the unit doesn’t have. In this trade, that’s not a sales error.
• A person sends every quote. The system drafts and wakes people up. It doesn’t press send.
• Documents get checked physically before the unit ships. A scan on file is the start of the check, not the end.
• Everything gets logged. Who saw the request, when, what was flagged and what went out.

How you’ll know it’s working

• Median minutes from AOG request to quote sent, nights and weekends tracked separately.
• AOG win rate on requests where you held a matching unit.
• Share of quotes needing correction after they went out.
• Quality flags per week, and how many turned out to be real issues.
• Units with documents fully scanned and linked, as a share of serialized stock.

Where I’d start

Pull 90 days of AOG requests and mark three things for each: whether you had a matching unit, how long you took to answer, and whether you won. Then pick the slowest step. For most shops I’d bet it’s finding the paperwork, so scan and link the documents for the hundred units buyers ask about most.

If this sounds like your week, send me a note through the contact page.