Boeing’s maintenance program for the 787 Dreamliner received FAA approval in December. Boeing says the 787 should be 30% less expensive to maintain than comparable products due to its design, wide use of composite structures and highly integrated systems architecture.
The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore in December issued a checklist for Safety Management System assessments. The CAAS SMS Assessment Checklist, available to download at http://www.caas.gov.sg/ caasWeb/export/sites/caas/en/Regulations_And_Guidelines/Guidelines_and_Manuals/AFO/Reference_Materials/download/aw127.pdf, measures SMS effectiveness.
Delta awarded Pratt & Whitney engine service contracts worth more than $1 billion that are intended to reduce supply chain costs. A 10-year, $1 billion contract covers the material and parts repair for Delta’s fleet of about 80 PW4000 engines, plus parts repair and material for Delta TechOps’s PW4000 customers, with Delta continuing to maintain the engines. Delta also awarded a $50 million, five-year contract to Pratt & Whitney to supply JT8D-219 engine parts.
Lufthansa Technik spun off its line maintenance business to form Lufthansa Technik Maintenance International (LTMI). The move involved reorganizing its international, non-Lufthansa line maintenance business, merging this with subsidiary Condor/Cargo Technik and spinning off the new entity into a separate but wholly owned subsidiary. The new company based at the Frankfurt Airport, home of the former Condor/Cargo Technik, begins life with 1,000 employees under the leadership of LTMI CEO Alexander Heilmann.
SR Technics will carry out 157 maintenance checks for Easyjet’s Airbus A319s under a pact that extends their prior collaboration. The two-week Intermediate Layover checks will take place at SR Technics Zurich on a dual line between mid-March and summer 2015.
Clifford Development received an FAA supplemental type certificate for its Cessna Citation Series 550 and S550 modification using Williams International FJ44-3A engines and incorporation of 35 other improvements. It appointed Stevens Aviation as an authorized installation center for its certified installations of the Williams FJ44-3A engines.
A new scissor lift from Man Lift Engineering features a smaller platform, lighter capacity and longer extendable deck than the company’s 3268EX model, and it can be equipped with many of the same optional features. The new 3246EX lift retains previous model’s 32-ft. height but shrinks the platform’s dimensions to 42 in.-by-84 in. and decreases maximum capacity to 700 lb. for lighter use applications. However, the model features a 4 ft. roll-out, extendable deck, adding 1 ft. of length over the 3268EX specifications.
Flight data results can be uploaded wirelessly from Cirrus SR 20 and SR 22 aircraft upon landing with a roadband unit from Alakai Technologies and integrator and safety analysis firm CAPACG. Alakai received amended supplemental type certification (STC) approval to install the unit in December. The partners, who market the broadband access unit under the brand name GA-FDM, aim to enable non-commercial owners and operators to monitor and share engine trend and flight operations data with their equipment and the monitoring services they offer.
Boeing also received a $1.1 billion U.S. Department of Defense contract for C-17 Globemaster III total systems support under the fiscal year 2009 C-17 Globemaster III Sustainment Partnership, a performance based logistics program. This includes a previous award of $514 million for the first six months of this fiscal year (October 2008-March 2009), and extends the period through September.
Lufthansa Technik’s new Hamburg engine overhaul center opened officially Dec. 15. LHT has invested 50 million euros in the facility, which will create 2,000 jobs and boost LHT's engine MRO capacity in Germany from 320 to 400. The new center will carry out work on CFM56 engines (up to 250 engines annually).
Turbomeca announced two powerplant specialists—MTU Aero Engines in Munich, Germany, and Atelier d’Industriel Aeronautic (AIA) in Bordeaux, France—to take over maintenance of the MTR390-2C turboshaft engines of the Franco-German Tiger combat helicopter. This followed their approval as MRO centers by the engine manufacturer, the European consortium MTU Turbomeca Rolls-Royce GmbH (MTR).
Click Commerce and Miro Technologies formed a strategic alliance to complete and market an aftermarket maintenance and logistics software solution with performance based logistics (PBL) specific functionalities, called the ePBL (extended PBL) portal.
BEIJING—The Australian Transport Safety Bureau added a second, similar incident to its investigation of the Oct. 7, 2008, uncommanded nose-down pitch event involving a Qantas Airbus A330-300. The safety panel expects to issue a preliminary report this month. Both incidents involved faults with air data inertial reference units (ADIRUs), and both occurred off the West Coast of Australia, where the U.S. and Australian navies operate a low-frequency radio communications station.
The once-high-flying civil helicopter market is having its wings clipped by the global financial crisis, as operators cut back flying hours and more rotorcraft hit the resale market. For those who service and repair helicopters, that means having to make some adjustments in their business planning, as demand for MRO declines along with flight hours. To get an idea of the potential impact of the current global economy on the helicopter MRO industry, it is necessary to look at some numbers.
ALTA (Asociacion Latinoamericana de Transporte Aereo) named the members of its new executive committee. President of the executive committee is Roberto Kriete, chairman of TACA Group; VP is Fabio Villegas, CEO of Avianca. New members of ALTA’s executive committee include Copa Airlines CEO Pedro Heilbron, LAN Airlines CEO Enrique Cueto, Mexicana CEO Manuel Borja Chico and TAM CEO David Barioni Neto.
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.
