Maintenance Operations in Aviation : Impact - Essay Example

Giving a brief history to the flight, the Aircraft Accident Report that was drafted by the National Transportation Safety Board (1986) on the accident actually pointed to certain facts that are of importance to the present study and the literature review. One of such facts has to do with the indication that on the day of the accident and at the time of the take off, the weather was very clear. What this indicates is that the possibility of a natural consequence to the accident is ruled out (p. 2). Still on the running out of a natural consequence, the report states that the surface wind was 020°at 22 kns.

What this leaves us with is human error. The accident actually occurred due to the negligence on the part of someone who should have ensured maintenance at some level of his career (Commission Regulation, 2002). Conditions Official reports from the aftermath actually concluded that the condition under which the accident occurred was one that resulted from detached engine (European Aviation Safety Agency, 2005). Even before the flight took off, the pylon-to-wing had been damaged. This conclusion was reached because according to Aircraft Accident Report (1989), “the wing's forward support fitting, which attached the pylon forward bulkhead to the wing at the upper and lower plugs and spherical bearings, was found at the main wreckage site” (p. 10). The resulting condition of such damage to the pylon is engine separation, which was equally imminent in the American Airlines Flight 191 accident.

Engine separation in aircrafts comes with several consequences and signals. Unfortunately though, most of these signals cannot be controlled in any way by the crew because they okay after takeoff. Some of the signals that can depict engine separation includes unintended left roll of approximately 50 degrees with a general fluctuation in airspeed from 183kt to 75kt (Skybrary, 2012). There also is the tendency that the second throttle level will slam to a halt. In the present case and example, though the plane had not taken off, a lot of the signals of the looming accident described were evident.

For instance at the time of the separation of the engine, the left wing of the plane got damaged, bringing about a visible retraction of the slats (Aircraft Accident Report, 1986). Explanations Investigations into the accident and further studies by aviation experts have pointed to a number of explanations that accounted for the accident and for that matter the separation of the engine. Rather surprisingly, fingers point to maintenance errors that resulted from human negligence as the explanation or cause of the accident.

There were reports of improper maintenance procedure at the pylon section (Aircraft Accident Report, 1989, p. 17). This means that maintenance procedures that should have been followed at the pylon section were poorly done. The report even indicated that in this instance, it was not as though maintenance on the plane had been neglected but that it had been poorly undertaken. This is because investigators found that eight weeks prior the accident, maintenance work had gone on at the side of the engine that was removed.

In the cause of the maintenance, the number one engine had actually been removed and serviced. The implication is that a lot of things went wrong during the repositioning of the engine, leading to the unexpected crash (Commission