Understanding the Passage
In a typical year, Innovair's airplanes are involved in 35 collisions while parked or being towed in airports, with a resulting yearly cost of $1,000,000 for repairs.
• Generally, in a year, Innovair, an airline company, is involved in 35 airplane ground collisions.
• These collisions are caused while the planes are being parked or being towed in the airports.
• The yearly cost for repairing the damaged planes is $1,000,000.
Inference: The planes do not have any passengers when the ground collisions take place.
To reduce the frequency of ground collisions, Innovair will begin giving its ground crews additional training, at an annual cost of $500,000.
• Innovair wants to reduce the number of ground collisions in a year.
• To reduce the number of collisions, Innovair is going to provide extra training to its ground crew.
• The cost of the extra training will be $500,000 yearly.
Although this will cut the number of ground collisions by about half at best, the drop in repair costs can be expected to be much greater, since
• The expected result of the training is to reduce the number of ground collisions by half its current number (reduce by 50% maximum) at max.
• But the reduction in the repair cost will go down by more than 50%.
Conclusion: The drop in the repair cost is expected to be greater than the drop in the number of ground collisions after the ground crews are given additional training.
Pre-thinking
Strengthen Framework
What information will help us believe more in the conclusion?
Conclusion: The drop in the repair cost is expected to be greater than the drop in the number of ground collisions after the ground crews are given additional training.
Given that:
(i) Innovair’s airplanes are involved in 35 collisions at the time of being parked or towed in airports, in a year.
(ii) The annual repair cost for these collisions is $1,000,000.
(iii) Additional training will be provided to the ground crew to curb ground collisions at the cost of $500,000.
(iv) The number of ground collisions is expected to be reduced by half the current number – at max.
Though Process
Problem – 35 airplane ground collisions annually.
Solution – Additional training worth $500,000 to be given to the ground staff.
Goal – Reduce the number of ground collisions.
Outcome –
1. The maximum reduction in ground collisions is expected to be half the current number.
2. Greater reduction in repair costs.
The repair costs are expected to be reduced even when the total number of ground collision is not reduced by more than half the current number.
The repairing cost for most collisions is very high.
Strengthener
A statement that indicates that the additional training given to the ground staff will help avoid ground collisions that require a significantly high repair cost.
Such a statement would strengthen the author’s conclusion that the repair costs will be reduced by a huge amount even if the number of collisions isn’t reduced by more than half their current numbers.
Answer Choice Analysis
(A) most ground collisions happen when ground crews are rushing to minimize the time a delayed airplane spends on the ground
• This option provides additional information on when and how the ground collisions take place. This is irrelevant to the conclusion that the number of ground collisions will go down by half, but the costs of repair will go down by much more. Thus, this is not the correct choice.
(B) a ground collision typically occurs when there are no passengers on the airplane
• This statement can be inferred from the passage. There is no new information that is presented by this option choice. Thus, this is not the correct choice.
(C) the additional training will focus on helping ground crews avoid those kinds of ground collisions that cause the most costly damage
CORRECT• This statement is directly in line with our pre-thinking strengthener. Therefore, this is the correct answer choice.
(D) the $500,000 cost figure for the additional training of ground crews includes the wages that those crews will earn during the time spent in actual training
• This option talks specifically about the training cost, whereas the conclusion is about the impact of the training on the repair costs. Thus, this is not the correct choice.
(E) most ground collisions have been caused by the least experienced ground-crew members
• Although this statement brings new information, this new information is irrelevant to the author’s conclusion. The author is not concerned with who caused most of the ground collisions because, according to the passage, all the ground crew will be provided additional training. Thus, this is not the correct choice.
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