Aircraft Maintenance - Assignment Example

Topic:  Aircraft Maintenance Following a spate of bad publi over perceived “safety/maintenance “ concerns a Major International and Domestic Flag carrier has asked you to consult on improving the carriers image. You are to bring/apply your knowledge of aircraft safety/design in a counter campaign to put to the media. In order to address bad publicity perceived over safety or maintenance concenrs of major international and domestic flag carrier, it is important to highlight the precautionary procedures, adherence to standards, and comparative safety records of an airline. • The openness of the Australian regulatory/investigation system The Australian regulatory and investigation system adheres to a democratic and common law system that follows acceptable, clear, and carefully laid out procedure that are usually protected by statues or legal framework. Regulatory systems were enacted by authorised government bodies and agencies that implement them. Usually, there are inter-governmental agencies involved in regulatory and investigation systems. It should be understood, however, that beyond the regulator or implementers are those regulated and the public. The public are usually involved because they are the main actors that are protected, which had the regulation in the first place. The Australian investigation process usually involves the regulators or authorities, the aggrieved, witnesses, and the suspected catalyst of the investigation. It follows a democratic process where the opposing parties present their cases and the regulator and authorities verifying or conducting the investigation. In the aviation industry, airworthiness is investigated usually against the Operator, the pilot and the aircraft engineers involved in maintenance. It is regulated by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority or CASA established in July 1995. Australia’s Air Safety Regulation System consists of a set of standards, a legal framework that describes the standards to be complied with, and the procedures for implementing and ensuring compliance with the standards. The 1944 Chicago Convention on International Aviation provided a basis for international civil aviation and by 1947, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). Australia today follows the ICAO Requirements such as Standard and Recommended Practices (SARPs), Technical Manuals and Advisory Material related to the ICAO Annexes through the National Aviation Authority (NAA). • Maintenance Aircraft maintenance is a very complex, systematised, and critical activity which is often called System of Aircraft Maintenance. It consists of technical inspections, overhauls, tests and corrective repair or restoration that ensure a safe, serviceable aircraft meeting strict and specific flying and commercial standards required by the Aviation Regulator (Swinburne University, 2008). Incidentally, there are various categories depending on the goal and outcome but these are basically preventative (hard time and on condition), corrective, servicing, and others, with a common objective of ensuring good safety outcomes or airworthiness. Airworthiness meant an aircraft condition that makes it operational in a safe manner and with the intended function. The various maintenance activities are: Servicing or conditioning tasks such as fluid replenishment, lubrication of parts, cleaning, checking tyre pressure, etc. Preventative are set of maintenance tasks and are usually scheduled and specified in the maintenance program, Corrective usually rights a defect or defects and may be un-scheduled to correct failures or defects that already exist or occurred. Routine or scheduled inspections Corrective tasks that occur after inspections Correction of deferred defect items Replacement of time-limited components Incorporation of modification and service bulletins Servicing and lubrication Improvement of appearance and application of cosmetics to correct defects Other un-scheduled activities arising from need. • Design The aircraft fail-safe design originally based on aircraft weight. The structures were very simple and light. Many of the parts including the primary struts, longerons, and wing spars were critical and full load parts of the aircraft structure. It is the design goal to have a “safe-life” for the aircraft. The aircraft design evolved to become more complex, and structural members were repeated to share the load. This aimed for reduction of failure as when a primary structure failed, the secondary structure shares the load to prevent a catastrophe. This is called the “fail-safe architecture” that became applicable to aircraft structures, aircraft systems and power plants with a redundancy purpose of providing back-up structures or system allowing a serviceable alternative mechanism when failure or damage occurs. It consists of Primary, secondary, and damage protection redundancies to ensure minimum damage. • Statistics Safety level is measured through the count of safety fault incidents per 1,000 flying hours. Other airlines, the operators measure their Air Safety incident reports or ASIRs for every 1000 flying hours or FHRS per month. Report for overall trend is for each category of Engineering and Maintenance incident or in-flight incident. During an accident, the aircraft may lost an aircraft or hull, or passenger fatalities. In this instance Air Safety is measured as rate of hull loss accident per million departures or the rate of fatal accidents per million flying hours. • Compare with other countries/carriers The Aircraft Crashes Record Office in Geneva (2011) recorded 27 total accidents in Australia from 2000 to 2009 with 70 fatalities , and 4 accidents in 2010 onwards with 5 fatalities. The United Kingdom has about 21 accidents, and 33 fatalities for the period 2000-2009, 2 accidents and 2 fatalities from 2010 onwards. Canada has a registered • Comparision with past eras in aircraft design and operation (900 words). Aircraft design is dependent on type of certificate, airworthiness, and purpose of the aircraft. It evolved from experimental to the modern aircraft but maturity of aircraft design emerged from the end of the 1950s with the introduction of jet transport (NASA, 2011) with the Douglas DC-6 and DC-7 series, and the Lockheed Constellation series. They had four supercharged engines and pressurised cabins (NASA, 2011). By the 1960s, the high-performance jet-powered transport with turbopropeller or turboprop engine that transmitted power to the air through the propeller rather than jet exhaust. It is light and relatively simple with up to 15,000 horsepower (NASA, 2011). A smaller aircraft design are twin-engine airlines and are employed on short-haul types of operations. 2. Pick one of the 6 definitions below and write two paragraphs to explain/identify some of the explanatory detail in CAR’s/CASR’s etc., for the selected definition. a. “maintenance” b. “approved system of maintenance” c. “aircraft component” There are numerous Aircraft components and some of these include the life limited parts, flight critical parts, repairable parts. Specifically, these may include the fixed-wing, fuselage, empennage or tail, landing gear, and powerplant. d. “design standard” e. “major damage” f. “major defect” (100 words) Reference: NASA. 2011. Transport Aircraft, Quest for Performance: The Evolution of Modern Aircraft. Accessed from http://history.nasa.gov/SP-468/ch6-2.htm Read More