Aircraft Airworthiness is Important

Aircraft Airworthiness 

How does this affect you ?

AIRWORTHY means an aircraft meets its type design and is in a condition for safe operation.

This definition is taken from PUBLIC LAW 103-272, previously the FEDERAL AVIATION ACT OF 1958, and is also found on the face of each aircraft's standart airworthiness certificate.

Two conditions must be met before an aircraft can be considered “airworthy”:

• The aircraft must conform to its type certificate (TC); that is, when the aircraft configuration and the components installed are consistent with the drawing, specifications, and other data that are part of the TC, and include any supplemental TC and field-approved alterations incorporated into the aircraft.
• The aircraft must be in condition for safe operation; this refers to the condition of the aircraft relative to wear and deterioration.

  

 Who is responsible for  Airworthiness?

• •            This is a shared responsibility.
• •            The pilot is ultimately responsible!
• •            As a pilot, you need to understand this.
• •            As a flight instructor, you need to make sure that your students understand this.
• •            Operating rules prohibit the operation of an aircraft that is not airworthy.

• 

Maintenance

No aircraft is so tolerant of neglect that it is safe in the absence of an effective inspection and maintenance programme. The processes that affect an aircraft are Deterioration with age (e.g. fatigue, wear and corrosion) as well as chance failures (e.g. tyre burst, excess structural loads).

Aircraft Maintenance can be defined in a number of ways and the following may help understand the different aspects:

“Those actions required for restoring or maintaining an item in a serviceable condition including servicing, repair, modification, overhaul, inspection and determination of condition”. [World Airlines Technical Operations Glossary]

“Maintenance is the action necessary to sustain or restore the integrity and performance of the airplane” [Hessburg, 2001]

“Maintenance is the process of ensuring that a system continually performs its intended function at its designed-in level of reliability and safety.” [Kinnison and Siddiqui, 2013]

The reasons for carrying out maintenance are neatly summarised by [Lam 2002]:

1. Aircraft safety – airworthiness at its heart
2. Keep aircraft in service – Availability, which is of key importance to an operator i.e. the aircraft can meet its schedule.
3. Maximise value of asset (airframe, engines and components) – of prime importance to the owner or lessor.

Maintenance will consist of a mixture of Preventive and Corrective work, including precautionary work to ensure that there have been no undetected chance failures.

There will be inspection to monitor the progress of wear out processes, in addition to:

• Scheduled or Preventive work to anticipate and prevent failures.
• Unscheduled work – Repair maintenance and On-condition maintenance

In general terms, for preventive work to be worthwhile, two conditions should be met:

1. The item must be restored to its original reliability after maintenance action, and 
2. The cost of maintenance action must be less than the failure it is intended to prevent

When are aircraft maintenance records required

•     Whenever any maintenance, preventive maintenance, rebuilding, or alteration isperformed.

•  Maintenance means inspection, overhaul, repair, preservation, and thereplacement of parts (excludes preventive maintenance).

•    In other words, you must make a record entry for everything, including tire changes.