AGING GRACEFULLY
THE CHALLENGES OF MAINTAINING AGING AIRCRAFT
by James Careless T
o think of it another way, the A-320 has been in service for nearly a quarter of a century. All the other aircraft listed have been flying even longer. These aren’t the only widely-used aircraft that are aging. In the business aviation
sector, this category includes “the Falcon 10, 100, 20 and 200 as well as early production Falcon 50 aircraft; Challenger 600s, Lear 31s and 35s, Gulfstream IIIs and older,” says Mike Menard, StandardAero’s VP/GM Springfield. It’s the economy that is forcing carriers to keep aging aircraft in service. With money in short supply, “aircraft companies, owners, operators, and fleet managers are experiencing an increasing need for their fleets to maintain safe operations beyond their original design lives or service goals,” says Dr. Melinda Laubach-Hock. She is director of the National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR) Aging Aircraft Lab at Wichita State University in Wichita, Kansas. “This need results in a growing percentage of aging aircraft that must maintain their airworthiness and structural integrity by using standard methods of inspection and repair.” The fact that widely-used aircraft are getting older is not the problem. The issue is how much an airline/business owner has to pay to keep an older airplane airworthy—and at what point the hassle and cost exceed the benefits. “Without a specified design life, or after the design life is reached, the cost of the required maintenance and inspections must be carefully weighed against the benefit of continued operation,” Dr. Laubach-Hock says. When this financial ‘point of no return’ is reached—as happened years ago with the iconic Boeing 707—these aircraft begin to vanish from the skies. Eventually, the only people still flying such aircraft are well-heeled collectors. As for finding MRO support for such aircraft, it can be hard to find. “The service for a given model will be stopped if there is a lack of demand for it,” says Andreas Halske. He is fleet manager A340-300, Key Account Management with Lufthansa Technik Aircraft Engineering. “This is especially the case when airlines withdraw a certain model from service.”
Aviation Maintenance |
avm-mag.com | April / May 2012 35
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