Technical stops: what were the issues in 2011, minimizing impact and improving recovery

As any other accelerator, the LHC has to undertake periods of stop for maintenance. Five technical stops have been performed during the 2011 run and sometimes a quite long recovery time was experienced. An analysis of the reasons is presented paying particular attention to the interventions carried out during the stop. Following this analysis, an outlook on the future that aims to increase the LHC availability and to diminish the downtime is also considered. Further consideration is put on the possibility to perform maintenance only once the machine undergoes a problem, instead of during planned stops.