A Lufthansa Technik employee has created a muffler that cuts the noise that avionics ventilation can cause in a hangar. The device, dubbed Silencer, is now being produced by maintenance equipment specialist Franke Care System for widebody and soon narrowbody aircraft. Employee Gunther Adamczyk was rewarded under Lufthansa Technik's “Impulse” internal premium scheme.
Wedged between customer demands for tighter turn times and competition from original equipment manufacturers, independent avionics and component shops are being squeezed to perform as never before.
Washington An FAA About-Face FAA, flooded by a wave of industry opposition that started with a tremor of protest, has agreed to drop a recently minted interpretation of its rule on what constitutes adequate rest for airline mechanics, thus reverting to a more flexible, widely accepted standard.
Airlines can perform predictive maintenance much more effectively because new aircraft yield more data, and the tools for exploiting it have improved dramatically. Yet ways of thinking and business processes also must change, which often is more difficult than tapping sensors.
Asia, the Middle East and North America are emerging as the most attractive likely markets during the next three years for Boeing 777 widebody heavy maintenance visits and C checks, underscoring the potential for a capacity crunch heading the industry's way.
Think “brake container” and safety might not be one's first consideration. Perhaps it should be. Extricating aircraft brakes from traditional containers entails lots of tugging and plenty of manhandling. That's because “the brake lies horizontally,” says Ron Miller. He chairs the Joint Air Transport Safety Committee at the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers. He estimates, depending on the aircraft, those brakes weigh 100-400 lb.
Washington NTSB's revamped most-wanted list of safety improvements and a set of related recommendations are challenging the FAA to revisit its recently established position against mandating cargo aircraft fire-suppression systems.
In Paul McElhinney's first formal sit-down interview with the press, he tells Aviation Week about how GE will have to change and innovate to ramp up to service 45,900 engines in 2020
With a demand for higher levels of customer service, third-party logistics providers are developing services for the MRO industry that go far beyond basic warehousing and transportation. These include:
When Moog Aircraft Group launched its total support program for flight-control systems for the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350, the concept was simple: Guarantee airlines that a component will be ready to ship within 2 hr.—or as little as 10 min. in an aircraft-on-ground (AOG) situation—from a location no more than 6-7 hr. from anyplace in the world.
Of the hundreds of products and services we wrote about in MRO Links this year, these garnered the most interest from readers. The Top 10, broken down by category, include nacelle repairs, spare parts, composites, inflight entertainment, cargo conversions and cabin interiors. To access more information about the following, go to www.AviationWeek.com/mrolinks and enter the Link number under the Advanced Search section of the page. 1. Nacelle Needs
Error reduction in a maintenance operation demands optimal performance from technicians. But in this era of downsized workforces, aggressive cost-cutting and constant time pressures, it's tougher than ever to extract peak performance from mechanics every day.
Software upgrades, for the most part, are now an on-wing proposition. But, as Mitch Klink of the Avionics Maintenance Conference explains, all software modifications—and the media/hardware to transfer them—should conform to the baseline version of the Arinc 615 protocol to allow the use of portable data-loaders for on-wing applications. He cautions that, often when these upgrades are performed on-wing, the LRUs containing the new software versions become non-interchangeable with the LRUs containing the previous software versions.
1. New Stability Manufacturer: Trelleborg Sealing Solutions Applications: Trelleborg's new material, Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer E8T89, is designed to be used for the aerospace range of O-rings in civilian aircraft hydraulic systems. It remains stable in Type IV and V phosphate ester fluids even at elevated temperatures. Specifications: The material is compliant with NAS 1613 Rev 5. The LRCCP in France accredited it to NFL17-241B8, and Boeing has approved it for use.
