Author: neilw

On November 20 and 21, 2013, Aviation Maintenance held its first ever U. S. event, the AVS Summit USA in Orlando, Fla. Our keynote speaker lineup included two top leaders in the aviation maintenance world. Dr. Chris Markou, deputy director engineering, the International Air Transport Association(IATA) and Marshall Filler, managing directory and general counsel for the Aeronautical Repair Station Association (ARSA).

Some umbrella themes of the event were improving operational efficiency, getting leaner, innovating, managing costs and saving money. Dr. Markou talked about IATA’s efforts to simplify maintenance operations by incorporating paperless technologies, thereby facilitating regulatory compliance and enabling new processes to reduce costs. He offered thoughts on how to do this via digital aircraft records, e-parts tracking, RFID and real-time data communications via the cloud. He also said that IATA sees some resistance to the use of some forms of digital documentation such as the digital signature and suggested that if we can trust our banks to digitally secure our money, we should be able to do the same with aircraft records and signatures.

ARSA’s managing director, Marshall Filler, offered thought leadership on the global aviation regulatory environment. He talked about the economic and political realities ofregulations from a maintenance organization’s view point and he offered recommendations on working smarter with that environment. Filler offered in depth explanations of how to work with the “state of registry” airworthiness standards for design approval, continuing airworthiness and personnel certification. He offered ways to work smarter via bilateral agreements, CAMOs and SMS.

After the keynote addresses, the conference split into two tracks: commercial MRO and business jet MRO. Top MRO professionals from around the world shared real world examples of improving their operations. Luis Gustavo Silva, executive director from LATAM showed how he lead change at his company via a well-planned process and top-down buy-in. Pedro Costa, GM of continuous improvement at TAP E&M in Portugal presesnted a case study on continuous improvement by showing how TAP made strides in the A-check on the A340. These were just two samples of the amazing information and expertise shared in Orlando. Join us in London for more!

 

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In October 1985, Emirates Airline began service with a leased Boeing 737 and Airbus 300-B4, basically serving Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian destinations. Fifteen years later, in 2000, it had grown to 28 aircraft. Today it has more than 200 aircraft, and took delivery of its 44th A380 last December for a total of 12 delivered in 2013 and a fleet total of 212. It is the world’s largest operator of the world’s largest commercial jetliner, and will be taking delivery of another 13 in 2014.

Last November Emirates entered the aviation record book by placing the largest aircraft order by dollar value in civil aviation. During the biennial Dubai Air Show, it placed an order for 150 Boeing 777s, consisting of 35 777-8Xs and 115 777-9Xs, plus options on an additional 50, along with an order for an additional 50 A380s, for an estimated list price of $99 billion.

This gives the Dubai, UAE-based carrier a total firm order book of 385 aircraft consisting of 214 Boeing 777s, 101 Airbus A380s, and 70 Airbus A350s.

It thus becomes clear why maintaining the current fleet while preparing for incoming aircraft is a major challenge facing Emirates Engineering, the maintenance branch within the Emirates Group.

The airline is expecting to take 25 of its new A380s just within the next four years, so a major part of that challenge is physically preparing to take delivery of the new aircraft while maintaining the current fleet plus preparing its older fleet of leased A330s and 340s to be returned.

To do that, it is in a major facility expansion mode, building four new hangars to add to the seven hangars currently available at Dubai International Airport (DXB), according to Iain Lachlan, Divisional Senior Vice President, Aircraft Maintenance Engineering. All of the current hangars are A380 compatible, as will be the four new ones, with each having floor space of approximately 100 square meters, Lachlan said. The seven hangars, plus a paint hangar, is considered the largest free-spanned structures in the Middle East, with roofs support by 110-meter long single spans.

The new hangars are expected to be ready during the first quarter 2014. Emirates also has an engine test cell capable of producing about 150,000 lbs of thrust. Both of these are located about 40 km from the airport. Lachlan said the engine test cell will focus primarily on GE 90 engines used to power the 777 and the GP7200 engines used on the A380.

Preparing for the introduction of the new aircraft is not cheap. Unlike maintenance operations such as Lufthansa Technik and British Airways Engineering, Emirates Engineering does not sell its services to third-party operators, particularly at the C check level. The maintenance facility is simply too busy with the introduction of new wide body aircraft to take on additional heavy maintenance for other carriers, Lachlan said. The facility already has five lanes for C checks, with a sixth coming on line in 2014 and a seventh in 2016 just for its own aircraft.

“So with the fleet growth, I need additional hangars just to manage the existing fleet. With a fleet of 180 aircraft, all wide body, and growing with another 200 aircraft (coming in), we just don’t have the capacity.”
However, it does support other airlines at the line maintenance level, Lachlan said. It currently provides support for six airlines at its Dubai hub—Virgin Atlantic, British Airways, Singapore, Singapore Cargo, Korean and Air France.

It will also assist other carriers at other destination airports if needed. “We don’t turn down people that need help. We are also the Middle East agent for aircraft recovery, with all the recovery equipment necessary to an aircraft having difficulty. We have the recovery jacks and the trained personnel, and we work with the IATA supplier for the region. We have invested heavily in that.”

Emirates Engineering also is not considered a profit center and does not sell its service to the airline.

 

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Welding hasn’t changed in decades or welding hasn’t changed at all. That’s what you hear from veteran practitioners. Many of them have been using the same oxy acetylene or tungsten inert gas (TIG) equipment for decades, and have seen no need to change. But the industry has not been static: there has been a steady stream of innovations and new products.

Change probably occurs at a faster pace in more high-volume, production scenarios. Automated welding, once properly set up, can all but guarantee the quality and the repeatability of welds on a job. Military contractors are using friction stir welding, which doesn’t require any kind of torch. It generates heat by the high-speed spinning of a cylindrically shaped tool.

For lower-volume applications like aircraft maintenance, automated welding probably would be the exception to the rule. Welders use manual TIG, metal inert gas (MIG) or oxy acetylene torches, all of which have been available for many years.

Although oxy acetylene is the process that is tested for in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) exam for candidate airframe and powerplant (A&P) mechanics, the TIG process is generally viewed as relatively more advanced. For one thing, TIG is more controllable in real time. As an electrical process, TIG has benefited from advances in the manipulation of electrical current—such as wave shaping and high-frequency switching—that help to fine-tune characteristics of the arc such as the heat output, cleaning vs. penetration, arc stability and directional control for difficult-to-weld materials such as aluminum, titanium and magnesium.

The technologies are very different. TIG uses an electrical arc to create heat and shields the weld puddle with inert argon gas. With oxy acetylene, the welder ignites acetylene gas with a handheld striker and feeds the acetylene with oxygen to create a high-temperature flame. The acetylene flame melts the metal with the intense heat of the inner cone, approximately 5,600 degrees F, and then shields the molten puddle with the flame’s outer envelope until cooled. Oxy acetylene is also a dirtier process, as the burning acetylene creates carbon soot if the right mixture is not achieved, says Dave Duhon, a recently retired welder with a major airline.

Oxy acetylene is better for cutting and brazing than for welding, says Ray Bacon, an instructor at the A&P school within Tarrant County College in Fort Worth, Texas. “It takes a lot of heat for a gas flame to make steel molten, and the heat spreads too far, so you wind up really heating up your work and could punch a hole in it or distort it.” More modern techniques concentrate heat in a tiny area, he says, so that even though the temperatures are higher, the material cools quickly without a lot of distortion.

 

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