Overhaul & Maintenance MRO Blog

FAA's Trip To Aeroman

During a congressional hearing this week focusing on outsourced maintenance FAA officials detailed a trip they made to El Salvador to take look at Taca's Aeroman.

Every Aeroman technician is certified according to El Salvador's regulatory process, and while that's not a mirror image of US procedures, FAA's representatives said it is closely aligned with the A&P system. They also pointed out that Aeroman goes a step farther, with about 25% of its technicians traveling to the US to become A&P certified.

Those officials also pointed out that Aeroman's two US customers -- JetBlue and US Airways -- have about seven or eight of their own employees based at Aeroman.

Grilled FAA, continued

The Aviation Subcommittee hearing is over now (see item below for more details). A lot of the final 30-45 minutes was spent discussing the lack of funding available for FAA maintenance inspectors to do their jobs. It's tough to inspect U.S. repair stations, let alone foreign ones, without an adequate travel budget. What are the odds that the administration and OMB will listen and fund FAA adequately? Look for more details on the hearing in tomorrow's Aviation Daily and online at www.AviationWeek.com.

JSF Autonomic Logistics

Tom Farmer, president of Pratt & Whitney Military Engines, briefed me yesterday in East Hartford, Conn., on the F135 engine program for the Joint Strike Fighter. He said the engine is performing flawlessly.

It features “smart systems” that enable it to provide autonomic logistics and robust maintenance awareness. Sensors monitor lots of parameters, from engine operation to debris ingestion. Farmer said the engine is kind of like a self-sufficient system that requests your involvement when needed. Because of this smart system, the F135 engine doesn’t require scheduled inspections. That’s pretty amazing.

The engine also has 40% fewer parts than legacy engines, and all line-replaceable components can be removed and replaced with six common hand tools, which should especially help maintainers in the field.

The F135 first flew with maximum takeoff power on March 13. Its first flight on the JSF was Dec. 15, 2006.

Grilled FAA

FAA's Nick Sabatini spent a chunk of time this morning getting grilled by members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's Aviation Subcommittee. As of a few moments ago (11:30 a.m. EDT), the hearing was in recess while the subcommittee members went to vote, but it is expected to start up again soon. If you want to listen in and watch, click on this link. It makes for some interesting -- sometimes politically charged -- listening. Also testifying this morning is Calvin Scovel III, the DOT IG. His testimony is already available. If you want to read it, click here.

A380 Flies Past Washington Monument

The Airbus A380 visiting Dulles International Airport today as part of its proving flights made a pass over downtown Washington, DC late this morning. The super jumbo flew a southerly course, part of the tradition Potomac River approach to Ronald Reagan National Airport, to allow it to be photographed by Airbus with the monuments of Washington in the background. At 11:20 a.m. the A380 appeared briefly behind the Washington  Monument. It then banked right rolling out between the Pentagon and DCA. Some organizations in the Washington, D.C. area were alerted in advance to the flyover to ease any security concerns about the low flying jumbo jet. The flyover was not announced in advance to the general public however. Photo: Ed Hazelwood

Class 2 EFBs Touted As Runway Safety Enhancer

Interesting announcement by FAA Friday afternoon concerning a revised certification process for Class 2 electronic flight bags (EFBs) that will lead to systems being developed for the specific purpose of tracking and displaying an aircraft's "own ship position" on airfields.

There was a bit of confusion in the press briefing, so let's get a few things straight up front. The cockpit -mounted systems will display a graphical airport map and an icon representing the aircraft that will allow a flight crew to "see," at a glance, where its aircraft is on the airfield. The systems will NOT display other aircraft or vehicles, or have any alerting or warning capabilities; FAA's objective is to improve a flight crew's on-ground situational awareness, not provide pilots with a ground collision warning system. (As such, it's a safe bet that the announcement will do little to change NTSB's less-than-glowing opinion of FAA's progress on the board's most-wanted safety improvement to improve runway safety by, in NTSB's words, "giv(ing) immediate warnings of probable collisions/incursions directly to flight crews in the cockpit.")

FAA expects the devices to be ready for in-service usage this year, and suggests the per-unit cost could be as low as $20,000, or about 1/10th the projected price of a full-blown Class 2 EFB unit certified for on-ground and in-flight use. (All of these figures came from FAA. We'd love some supplier input on their accuracy--feel free to hit the "Comments" link and go to town.)

So, a relatively reasonable upgrade cost for the thousands of airliners that don't have built-in (Class 3) EFBs with airport surface display technology, and improved situational awareness that could help prevent a repeat of accidents like Comair 5191 and Singapore 006? What's not to like here?

Perhaps--just perhaps--this:

Although new airport surveys are expected to provide more accurate airport data, currently the most significant error source is expected to be the data describing the airport environment. Rather than trying to validate the accuracy of data before it is used, acceptable system performance is achieved through reporting of errors, and having a process to take corrective action or notify operators when there is an unresolved error. It is expected that pilots will report errors if they observe that the indicated position is inconsistent with the accuracy implied by the display.

That's from a September 2004 Volpe Center report entitled "Human Factors Considerations in the Design and Evaluation of Moving Map Displays of Ownship on the Airport Surface" (.pdf).

The FAA officials present at Friday's briefing underscored that research has shown pilots looking at a graphical airport map in the cockpit will spend less time looking at the display if their aircraft's position IS depicted with an icon. An icon-less airport map, however, leads pilots to take longer looks at the display, presumably in an effort to decipher it and confirm their plane is where they think it is on the airfield.

But what are the human factors ramifications of a pilot seeing an icon on a graphical map that's supposed to be his airplane, yet the icon is clearly in the wrong place?

Airport survey data is improving, but has it really gotten that much better in the last 30 months?

The Volpe report notes that, per RTCA DO-257A, the "total system accuracy" for these airport surface moving map displays "shall not exceed 100 meters (95%)." Now, journalists don't often make good statisticians, but that sure sounds like a more elegant way of saying these systems can be off by about 300 feet, 5% of the time, and still be considered within standards.

Perhaps this is not a big deal. After all, 300 feet off isn't enough to mistakenly depict a plane's icon on a parallel runway. On the other hand, it's not hard to find parallel taxiways, or even runways and taxiways, separated by 300 feet or less. In fact, that's perfectly acceptable per FAA's own airport design standards (.pdf).

It's clear that FAA sees potential in these systems. Giving flight crews accurate, easy-to-decipher information detailing where they are on the airfield at all times doesn't have a downside.

It will be interesting to see if, in Administrator Marion Blakey's words, this technology truly is "ready for prime time"--or if Friday was merely about seeking a bit of positive press in advance of what's likely to be a runway safety-themed, NTSB-administered pounding next week.

--Sean Broderick

A380 in Pictures

While I didn't get to fly as far as Frank Jackman did on the A380 I did manage to quickly turn around some interesting pictures during a 90 minute proving flight on March 21st that flew round trip from JFK to JFK. Here are a few viewpoints from that flight.

Monitor on seat back of A380 shows live video from the plane from three different vantage points. This view shows the A380 taking off from JFK from a camera on the vertical stabilizer

Pilot and copilot of the A380 proving flight smile at the end of the JFK to JFK proving flight.

The A380 cockpit is more advanced than the A340 and contains technology that will be seen on the newer A350. Some of this technology includes the large airport layout screen display on the left, the large (yellow & red) screen to the right that allows flight direction inputs for automatically flying the plane.

A380 sits on the tarmac at JFK upon completion of its proving flight

Up close & personal with the Rolls-Royce Trent 900. This is one of four of the 76,500 lb. thrust engines that power the A380.

Smiling Ed Hazelwood after taking a 90 minute proving flight on the A380.

A380 By the Numbers

Before the interest in this fades completely, I wanted to wrap up my observations about Monday's flight of Airbus A380 MSN007. In the days leading up to takeoff, Lufthansa and Airbus had talked about flying 500+ passengers to New York Kennedy. They came up short, although not by much. The aircraft, which is configured to to accommodate 519 passengers in three classes of service, left Frankfurt with 458 passengers and flight and cabin crew of 30. As far as I know, everyone made it to New York.

At takeoff, the aircraft weighed 485 tonnes. Its landing weight was 381 tonnes. Fuel consumption was 102 tonnes. Cruising altitude was 36,000 feet and cruise speed was 0.85 mach. The route taken was Frankfurt-London-Shannon-North Atlantic Track B via Gander-Boston-New York. The aircraft touched down at 12:11 p.m. EDT for a journey time of eight hours and 11 minutes. Before taking off, the pilot said he expected a flight time of seven hours and 45 minutes. We could have landed before noon EDT, but we spent a while tracing patterns in the sky over Long Island waiting for clearance to land. Apparently it took some time to get the media situated to record the landing.

Departure from Frankfurt was scheduled for 9 a.m. local time, but the aircraft actually pushed back from the gate about 8:45 a.m., about five minutes after boarding was completed. We turned onto the runway and began our takeoff roll almost precisely at 9 a.m. I didn't realize it at the time, but the crew of MSN007 apparently was intent on getting to New York before the A380 flying from Toulouse to Los Angeles reached LAX. The New York-bound flight landed 14 minutes before the Los Angeles flight.

We were sent on our way in Frankfurt and greeted in New York by dozens of ramp workers, airport police, station managers and others giving us the 21st Century Salute -- hand or hands outstretched, holding up small digital cameras or cell phones, eagerly recording the moment.

I was a little surprise at how quickly the aircraft got down the runway and into the air. There was never a sense of it "lumbering" along. On the other side of the Atlantic, I thought it slowed gracefully on the runway (although truth be told there was a jolt when the wheels hit the pavement).

I rushed off the plane to get to a post-flight press conference, so I don't really know how long it took everyone else to get off. The Customs and Immigration folks at JFK were more than ready for us; I think just about every lane through passport control was open. My bag appeared on the belt fairly quickly, so no complaints there, either.

It will be years, probably decades, before the economic success or failure of the A380 is determined, but it is a fine aircraft that I would happily fly again.  -- Frank Jackman

Emergency AD For The Embraer 170/190

FAA yesterday issued an emergency ad for Embraer 170s/190s after the aft cargo door on a -190 opened just after takeoff. The door wasn't fully closed, and inspectors found that the door frame lateral roller fitting was cracked and uncovered a distortion in the roller fitting cover plate. That distortion caused an error in the door position indication system. A similar scenario occured on the front cargo door of an Embraer 170, but ground workers discovered the problem before takeoff. FAA is mandating several tasks for operators including removal of the roller fitting cover plate, a one-time inspection of both doors to detect signs of interference between the lock hanlde and aft edge liner assembly, reworking of the assembly if inspections show intereference, a one-time inspection of both doors to look for signs of lateral roller fitting damage and immediate replacement of those fittings with the same part number. All those tasks are interim measures. FAA said Embraer is developing a mod for the door position sensing system, and once work is complete the agency might opt for additional rulemaking. A copy of the AD is available on FAA's site --http://www.airweb.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgAD.nsf/NewEmergencyAD?OpenView

You Can't Make This Stuff Up...

The duration of yesterday's Frankfurt-New York A380 flight (officially designated DLH flight 8940), according to FlightAware: Seven hours, 47 minutes.

That's right, 7:47.

Click the thumbnail below to see a screenshot with the relevant data. (Thanks, FlightAware.)

--Sean Broderick