Aviation Maintenance and Engineering - Coursework Example

AME and Section # of Aviation Maintenance and Engineering In modern aviation safety is most essential and focused factor. This has in turn brought the fatality rate of aircrafts and air crew to a very low extent as compared to the early years of flying history. Everybody knows that the flight history of humans date back to the Wright brothers but it was not later when man thought about the negligence in aviation maintenance which leads to a lot of aviation crashes along the way. The documented history of aviation maintenance leads back in the 60s where companies like Boeing started taking up safety as an essential part of their operations and services. All of the maintenance savvy institutions were established in the 1960’s with a sole goal, to increase safety and life of their equipment and aircrafts. The first institution that was built was known as RCM (reliability-Catered maintenance) but united airlines engineers. This was followed by Boeing’s MSG which till present is known as the standard which has to be followed (Kinnison, 2004). All the details of such practices are highlighted in this report and will try to cover the modern aspects of aviation maintenance and engineering as well. Current Issues In the modern era, the aviation industry is faced with a constant threat that is known as human error. Although a lot of research work has been carried out to pin point the loop holes in human psyche, even then there is an alarming rate of accidents caused by the negligence of the human hand and mind. The maintenance of aircrafts includes fast turnaround time, high pressure and a high number of tasks being performed at the same time. All these factors ca n lead to the lowering of human work manners while working on an aircraft or its components. Although, the advancement of technology has taken aircraft systems to a level which were un-imagined at the time when write brothers being laughed at, for having a dream that was never dreamt before. Powered flight was a dream, let alone sophisticated systems full of avionics loaded navigation systems and flight controls. All these innovations made sure that the systems improve but made the human rely more on technology and become complacent on his routine inspections and maintenance duties. The headings are bolded and centered. You should start off the paragraph with a simple left indent and start the discussion of the assignment. There is no gap between paragraphs. The aircraft incidents in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s made the research and development teams of different aerospace companies think about different factors leading to these crashes. The most compelling factor that came out from the research was the human factor. Majority of the crashes were due to wither the pilot error or technician error caused by negligence in the filed-line. After this astonishing discovery many agencies were constituted and the silence system was bought in to action. This was the biggest factor involved in incidents when it was an unknown phenomenon, but still takes the lives of thousand as the human falters the moment checks and balances allow him some leverage. Therefore, strict rules have been enforced to eradicate this menace from the aviation industry (Adrian, 2005). A lot of training funds and seminars are being conducted over a period of time in all the aviation related agencies so that maintenance practices can be safe form such an issue, which can hamper the safety of operations of an airline. Current Practices The recent problems and practices in an airline company were easily pointed out by an internal study in an airline covering the local region as a part of its internal- research department project. This report was focused mainly upon some key factors like unplanned and unscheduled maintenance, spare parts and component maintenance. Some of the common factors that were noted in the process are explained in detail in the following part of the report. Un-planned Maintenance Only about half of the maintenance related to heavy maintenance can be planed using the forecast method. This is due to the findings of a problem during pre-flight and thru-flight inspections and not when the aircraft is due for a routine inspection after the designated hours. This causes a lag in maintenance as some parts are not available as bench stock but have to be collected from depots or the OEM. Inventory Purchases It has been noticed that inventory demands for spares are placed in accordance with historic patterns and not because of the amount of hours that will be flown in a projected period again causing delay in the operations causing excessive pressure on the maintenance teams and the managerial staff of the company responsible. Cost Saving by Spare Part Reduction The companies have a tendency to order spare parts only when they are required so to save logging amounts accredited to them when an inventory item is kept on their books for long. By doing so, a forecasted shortage is inevitable causing more damage than the cost that has been saved by this practice. Spare-Part Shortage The primary goal which is seen to be kept when purchasing spare parts is due to unforeseen requirements of parts in between field-line maintenance. This happens to be a very common practice in the modern aviation industry where each and every action is taken to reduce the cost or cut edges so that profits can be generated more than predicted by the historic patterns. This causes a lack of sufficient knowledge regarding the spare parts in the inventory that require repairing. This also upholds the scheduling part of the whole system as it is heavily relied on it. It is also a common practice to schedule the repair of these parts to match with the dates on which the whole aircraft is due for inspection, saving both time and money at the same time (Premaratne, 2006). Modern Era Developments Many aspects of the modern-era aviation industry separate it from the practices that were used in the times before the advent of modern flying and issues related to it. Some of the aspects that have developed to extensive research and development will be discussed in this section to understand the way modern aviation maintenance has taken its place in history books for years to come. System Although this point was a leading factor in the previous years, but a consistent system for any aviation maintenance firm or institution in the present era is a vital factor without which the institution will neither survive the coming times or the financial losses. People always leave their jobs and posts and move on to better options. A system based on the institutional veins does not hamper when a key supervisor or technician leaves, but the essence of a good system is that the replacement officer will be competent and trained enough to keep the system running. This development can be easily explained in one line that “a company or institution should be system dependant and not person dependant”. Management The modern production and maintenance means that not all parts of an aircraft are prepared in the same country or even the same continent. Due to modern outsourcing the parts are made and repaired in the cheapest place possible, therefore managing the influx and out flux of spare parts and equipment is more important than before when an aircraft was made and repaired at one work centre. This has placed an added responsibility on the managers in the current situation. Safety Safety has now become an obsession of the modern world especially due to the military influx of aviation manuals and expertise in this business. It is currently, the most talked about and researched about topic in the aviation industry. A small lapse in safety may cause a huge amount of human loss as well as irreparable financial loss to a company. Many manuals and handbooks are specially designed to cater for the human psyche and its tendency to be complacent. Safety has emerged to be the sole focal point, especially after an incident happens in the aviation industry. One such incident will be mentioned in the following chapter, where a small negligence in the safety area resulted in an airliner being banned for life. Controversies With the amount of money flowing in the aviation business, it’s understandable that companies will go to all extends to hide their flaws and incompetence to stay at the top of their financial balance sheets. This has resulted in companies hiding their maintenance malpractices which result in further safety hazard as if a mistake is not addressed at the right time; it is bound to happen again. Similar controversy occurred when the wall street journal accused the American Airlines to hide its maintenance lapses in one of its fleet. Previously such accusations and fears had resulted in a complete overhauling of the wire bundles causing the cancelation of 1000 flights and huge financial loss to the airline (MSNBC, 2008). Similar controversy which resulted in the death of 100 passengers and 9 air crew was the one and only crash of the Concorde flight 4590 of Air France on the 25th of July 2005. The investigative report concluded some facts that were a disaster in respect to maintenance practices and safety. First of all the aircraft was overloaded by its regulation standard, showing another lapse in pre-flight maintenance where this issue could have been resolved. The main reason which came out to be the fatal reason for this aircraft was a metal strip on the runway which caused the tyre to burst and flamed up, stalling the engines eventually leading to the crash of the Concorde. The strip on the runway was no-accident but was also due to a maintenance malpractice on the DC-10 aircraft that had taken off prior to the Concorde. The strip came from the thrust reverse cowl door of the engine. On later investigation it was found that the strip was installed in violation with the aviation rules and regulations (David. 2001). It was a severe maintenance flaw as the people responsible for fitting it were equally responsible to those who did routine inspection of the exterior of the engine and passed it on various levels. This incident resulted in the grounding of an engineering master piece, the only supersonic passenger plane of its time. Conclusion This report can be concluded with the impact of the modern aviation maintenance and engineering services on the aviation industry as a whole over a period of 40-50 years. The impact has been slow to come but has been a critical factor in the safe operation of military and civil aircrafts. The impact is such that all accidents, whether fatal or non-fatal have reduced considerably in these years. The excessive training of the manpower has resulted in reduced human factor incidents. Although this menace has not been completely eradicated but the amount of checks and balances on any task ensure that the negligence is caught before the aircraft is airborne. Development of a system as mentioned before has been the root cause of the massive impact on the aviation industry regarding its logistic as well as maintenance practices. The system management has endured that all the faults that were being highlighted make way in the technical manuals and handbooks, which in turn help the technicians immensely while working on their respective tasks. Systematic approach to maintenance has brought immense responsibility on people handling the managerial side of the business. Not only they have to be technically sound but also fluent with man-power managing and scheduling of different task, as to give a boost to their airline operations as a whole. All these measures have ensured safe operations of any airliner, be it military or non-military. It can be easily concluded that modern aviation engineering has set a new standards for the generations to come. All these practices have not yielded results, but also have been carefully documented to implement system based maintenance rather that person passed maintenance. Flying machines have grown smarter by the day, and by doing so they don’t have any tolerance for slightest of negligence by either the operator or the technical team, therefore extreme measures and research will have to be carried out for the safe future of aviation industry. All these measures may seem harsh and costly, but tin the end ensure one or more tragic and heavy financial loses, making it a win-win situation for any company or owner. References David Rose. (2001, may 13). The real story of flight 4590: special investigation. Retrieved December 15, 2011, from http://www.iasa.com.au/folders/Safety_Issues/others/concordespacer.html Kinnison, H.A. (2004). Aviation maintenance management. New York: McGraw – Hill. MSNBC. (2008, April 14). American’s MD-80s cleared to fly again, Retrieved December 15, 2011, from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24029455/ Samaranayake, P. (2006) Current Practices and Problem Areas in Aircraft Maintenance. The University of Western Sydney, Australia Xavier, J.A. (2005) managing human factors in aircraft maintenance through a performance excellence framework Read More