Newson Gale's Bond-Rite EZ grounding and testing assembly is designed for applications where operators must establish a temporary low-resistance bond or connection to a local ground point. It should provide a solution for fleet and mobile equipment operators in situations where permanent ground connections are impractical.
Pratt & Whitney picked Mxi Technologies' Maintenix software to implement across its commercial and military engine platforms. Mxi says the integrated system will support Pratt & Whitney's expansion into power-by-the-hour contracts, helping the OEM collect and organize in-service engine data then plan and quote maintenance.
VEM Maintenance & Engineering gained Airbus approval as the OEM’s authorized repair center in Latin America for A310 rudders. The approval expands the MRO’s A310 repair program, which is fairly new: it received FAA certification to maintain the aircraft in August 2007, and EASA maintenance approval in January 2008. VEM M&E could see business from Airbus special structural instructions for the rudders to prevent fluid ingress and disbonding. EASA AD 2007-0266 (effective Oct. 22, 2007) and FAA AD 2008-11-05 (effective June 25, 2008) also address the issue.
Kelly Aviation Center earned EASA certification for the CF6-50 engine. The Lockheed Martin Corp. affiliate in San Antonio, Texas, currently does CF6-50 MRO for the KC-10 and E-4B fleet under contract to GE. Minority investors in Kelly Aviation Center are GE and Rolls-Royce.
LXE, an EMS Technologies company, recently introduced two new mobile computing products. Its VX8 and VX9 rugged mobile computers are designed to tap into customers' existing computer support resources, to give customers more flexibility for cost-sharing across organizations.
Envoy Aerospace, reissued STC to install a Universal Avionics EFI-890R multi-function display system with application server unit and optional Vision-1 synthetic vision system on Learjet 60 aircraft, STC ST02596CH
Spairliners began component support work for Qantas’ A380s under a new, 10-year technical services agreement. The joint venture of Lufthansa Technik and Air France Industries will repair and replace about 750 components from its warehouse under the deal, which covers all 20 of the aircraft Qantas has ordered. The agreement comes a year before Air France or Lufthansa are slated to receive their first A380s; including these future deliveries, Spairliners will provide component support for 47 total A380 aircraft.
Twenty years ago, OEMs warned about the dangers of PMA parts. Now, some manufacturers are making PMA parts themselves or licensing chosen vendors to do so. Boeing has given Goodrich approval to produce landing gear parts for the 737NG and 777. This means Goodrich can sell PMA parts—it prefers the term Goodrich OEM, or GOEM parts—directly to the airlines. In the past, Goodrich produced landing gear parts for Boeing, which sold them to the market. Now Goodrich can do both—sell to Boeing, or sell direct to the airlines.
We are in a recession, but we still have to find the money to rescue the banks, get a jobs program going, and bail out Detroit. And, we still have a couple of pretty hot engagements going on in Southwest Asia that are continuing to cost lives and money. The budget knives are out. Ever since 9/11, the Pentagon budgets have been strong. Those days are coming to an end. “The areas most likely to get cut are acquisition and procurement,” said Steven Kosiak of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
QinetiQ North America subsidiary SimAuthor, Inc. will continue to support the Commander Naval Air Force Military Flight Operations Quality Assurance (MFOQA) Bridge program with its flight data analysis, visualization software and MFOQA Subject Matter Expert (SME) team under a four-year, $5 million contract.
AirCell Business Aviation Services, reissued STCs to install satellite communications equipment on Dassault Falcon 2000, Falcon 20, Fan Jet Falcon and Bombardier BD-700-1A10 aircraft, Several STCs
Atlantic Fasteners won a pair of two-year contracts from Lockheed Martin together worth nearly $1 million. The West Springfield, Mass.-based manufacturer will provide Lockheed Martin’s U.S. business units with hundreds of fastener varieties through December 2010.
Marshall Aerospace received EASA Continuing Airworthiness Management Organization approval under Part M Sub-Part G, which allows it to provide continuing airworthiness management services and issue required Airworthiness Review Certificates (ARCs), from its main site in Cambridge, U.K., and from its regional office in Leiden, The Netherlands. IT
CMC Electronics received its first production order from Hawker Beechcraft in December for CMC’s Integrated Avionics System for Hawker Beechcraft’s T-6B Texan turboprop-trainers. Known as the CMC Cockpit 4000, the avionics suite includes an integrated avionics computer, head-up and multi-function displays and up-front control panels. CMC received orders for the first 35 production aircraft some seven months after Hawker Beechcraft conducted its first T-6B Texan flight last April.
The TechnoPack XT Videoscope from Karl Storz Industrial is intended to be durable, flexible and portable for on-the-go inspections. The videoscope itself features a touchscreen VGA monitor with an integrated sunshield. This monitor is positioned on a swivel mount attached to a telescoping support, which should make it easy for inspectors to view its screen from any angle.
AgustaWestland appointed Air Works its service center in India . Air Works offers MRO for fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. It also provides MRO services for Honeywell engines—TFE 731 and CFE 738 series—and APUs, as per an October 2008 agreement with the OEM. India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) approved Air Works last November for independent airline MRO at its commercial operations center in Hosur, near Bangalore.
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of columns intended to provide understandable, action- oriented human factors guidance, written by FAA’s top maintenance human factors scientist. The columns will appear every other month.
One debate circulating in the MRO community is the health of the landing gear manufacturing and overhaul market, and whether it is affected by the fleet downsizing of commercial airlines and reduced flying hours of business aircraft operators. Consider, too, the MROs that specialize in overhauling the landing gear of military aircraft, which worry whether January’s change to a Democratic administration in the U.S. will affect their business. Then, there are the niche players, non-aligned smaller maintenance providers, who always view the market cautiously.
Cairo-based carrier AlMasria Universal Airlines signed a total maintenance agreement with Egyptair Maintenance & Engineering to support its Airbus A320 fleet. AlMasria begins operations in the first quarter of 2009 with two A320s, offering service from Alexandria, Luxor, and Assiut to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, and Libya. It plans to add another four A320s in 2010.
