A large portion of the direct and indirect aircraft operational costs stems from the consequences of decisions made during the maintenance program development. Decision on maintenance task selection for non-safety category of failures, is based on the cost effectiveness, in which the cost of preventive maintenance should be less than the costs associated with the corrective action and failure consequence. Although the assessment of the direct cost for preventive and corrective maintenance is quiet straightforward, however quantification and estimation of the cost associated with the consequence of failure is a great challenge. This is due to a long list of contributory factors and lack of adequate data regarding the cost headings. This study attempts to estimate the economic consequences of aircraft system failures which lead to a technical delay. The paper considers financial losses, mostly due to the additional unexpected costs related to the flight crew, passengers, aircraft itself, ramp and airport, when one of the cost headings, e.g. the pre-fixed crew cost is known. The experience of the field experts has been used following a pairwise comparison technique to compare the cost headings, and to estimate the contribution of each one to the total cost of a delay. The study shows that the proposed model can be a tool to assess the cost of failure consequences in aircraft operation, when there is a limited data and information regarding the cost headings.