Essay On Aviation Maintenance Management

The aircraft starts to age as early as it first flies and different effects of aging starts to place about immediately. Nevertheless, this term is mainly applied to the concerns that can commence to take place when the new becomes significant and more than an average age of the aircraft of similar-class (De Florio, 2016). Hence, this paper aims to discuss about the Aging Aircraft Program and its validity within the maintenance industry of commercial aviation.

 

For addressing the concerns of ageing aircraft, the “Aging Aircraft Safety Act 1991” was enacted by the US Congress in 1991. This law required the administrator to prescribe the regulations, which would ensure the airworthiness of the ageing aircraft. It also instructed and required the administrator to review and inspect maintenance and the other records of the aircrafts that are used to provide the air transportation. The purpose of this inspection was to ageing are properly maintained and are in safe condition for the operation of the air transportation. This law also needed to create procedures that needs to be followed to perform the inspection (Boeing.com. 2022). 

 

 

The overall process of designing aircraft and the subsequent development of the principles for the approved maintenance programme, mainly aim to take the complete consideration of the effects of aircraft’s continued use. Nowadays, damage tolerance and philosophies of safe life Design are applied and suitable methods and intervals of inspection are developed to determine the overall effects of the fatigue, accidental, or environmental damage. This is also now quite usual for the sampling inspection programme related to fatigue and prevention of a corrosion and control programme to be developed (Skybrary.aero. 2022).

 

 

To keep older aircraft in the airworthy condition has found to have some key difficulties that have not been addressed by the maintenance prescribed. The serious issues of continuing airworthiness that have taken place in various ageing aircraft have been often a direct outcome of the gap between the present and formed practices needed for the aircraft Type Certificate issue and the approval of maintenance program (Clare & Kourousis, 2021).

 

 

Until recently, still some key issues that arises from the age of aircraft had not addressed and recognized until after taking place of the fatal accidents. Though most recently, general principles of the system deterioration that affect all the older aircraft, are getting the renewed attention. The US, that has seen various instances of the accidents due to the aging aircraft issues, has recently had developed the “Joint Council on Aging Aircraft” so as to coordinate development of the risk management solutions for different kinds of aging aircraft issue, particularly structures. An awareness of such safety issues in other airworthiness jurisdictions of production, design, and maintenance regulation is likewise high now and the preventable interventions are now being developed. The issues of maintenance that have taken place particularly with the structural failure of the aging aircraft have usually been considered as occurring from corrosion or fatigue, with sometimes, corrosion initiating the effects of fatigue (Skybrary.aero. 2022).

 

 

There are various desirable programs for the aging aircraft that must be followed in order to avoid any unforeseen accidents. For instance, Repair Assessment Program (RAP) develops and defines working relationship between the Flight Standards District Office airworthiness safety inspectors and Aircraft Certification Office engineers for the oversight of the operator maintenance. It is important to have clear understanding of the responsibilities and roles of the two for surveillance and approval of these programs (Fsims.faa.gov. 2013).

 

 

The safest and most effective way of negating likely combinations of key fatigue damage and corrosion, is implementing the fleet-wide prevention of corrosion and control program, having defined minimum standards.

 

Therefore, it can be concluded that the aging aircraft issue has been and still most significant issue that needs a considerable attention. It is important to have increased vigilance at the times of the waning years of the lifecycle of a fleet (Curran, Verhagen & Newcamp, 2016). An increasing rate of failure due to aging commence quite early in the aircraft’s life. Early evidence of the degradation is a precursor for the increased rates of failures, since use accumulates with the trajectory of age (MacLean, Richman & Hudak. 2018). The decision support system can be used for not only optimizing the plans of aircraft maintenance, but also to plan regarding the future maintenance policies (Deng, Santos & Verhagen, 2021). Lastly, it can be said that the different policies and standards related to the aircraft aging and corrosion prevention and control program must be followed so as to prevent any accidents or any unfavorable incidents.

 

Boeing.com. (2022). AERO - Complying with the Aging Airplane Safety Rule. Retrieved 17 July 2022, from https://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/qtr_02_10/3/#:~:text=The%20Aging%20Aircraft%20Safety%20Act,their%20airplanes%20are%20damage%2Dtolerant.

 

 

Clare, J., & Kourousis, K. (2021). Analysis of Continuing Airworthiness Occurrences under the Prism of a Learning Framework. Aerospace, 8(2), 41. https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace8020041

 

 

Curran, R., Verhagen, W., & Newcamp, J. (2016). Time to retire: indicators for aircraft fleets. International Journal Of Aviation Management, 3(4), 221. https://doi.org/10.1504/ijam.2016.10009056

 

 

De Florio, F. (2016). Airworthiness: An introduction to aircraft certification and operations. Butterworth-Heinemann.

 

 

Deng, Q., Santos, B., & Verhagen, W. (2021). A novel decision support system for optimizing aircraft maintenance check schedule and task allocation. Decision Support Systems, 146, 113545. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dss.2021.113545

 

 

Fsims.faa.gov. (2013). Order 8300.13, Repair Assessment Program, CHG 1. Retrieved 17 July 2022, from https://fsims.faa.gov/WDocs/Orders/8300_13.htm.

 

 

MacLean, L., Richman, A., & Hudak, M. (2018). Failure Rates for Aging Aircraft. Safety, 4(1), 7. https://doi.org/10.3390/safety4010007

 

 

Skybrary.aero. (2022).  Ageing Aircraft - Structural Failure. SKYbrary Aviation Safety. Retrieved 17 July 2022, from https://skybrary.aero/articles/ageing-aircraft-structural-failure.