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Aircraft maintenance and repair set to become business

Mega deals with foreign interests to serve expanding fleets

— FILE PHOTO

TECHNICAL MARVELS: Men at work at Lufthansa's hangar at Frankfurt Airport in Germany.

AS A booming civil aviation sector further expands its wings in India with about 300 aircraft criss-crossing the country's vast airspace and more jetliners waiting to be delivered, aircraft manufacturers and aero engineering companies are eyeing the maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) market in India, a sector in which India is underserved by aviation standards.

While a passenger awaits to enjoy the comfort and safety of air journey, aircraft mechanics and engineers get the aircraft ready, conducting pre-flight and ramp checks where individual functions are tested. Once a week the ramp check is supplemented by additional tests of the aircraft's systems.

The aircraft goes through the `A' Check every 350 to 650 hours which is about once a month and the largest maintenance exercise `C' Check gets scheduled every 15 to 18 months which involves a thorough inspection of the aircraft structure with system tests. The general overhaul of aircraft (D-Check) is done once in five to ten years depending upon the age and flight history. This exercise requires about 60,000 man-hours of labour for a wide-body jet like Boeing 747-400.

Capacity constraints

Both Air India and Indian have their jet and engineering shops in Mumbai and Delhi respectively which are equipped to carry out `C' checks but constraints on their capacities often lead to the two carriers outsourcing major engine repairs to workshops in Korea, Hong Kong and Germany. While for each A-320 aircraft a `C' check costs between $300,000 and $500,000, for bigger aircraft of Air India the cost can go up to $1.5 million per aircraft.

AI's deal with Boeing

As part of its mega-deal with Boeing, Air India will also partner with the U.S. aircraft manufacturer for setting up an MRO facility in the country, most probably at Nagpur. Boeing has already pledged an investment of $100 million for the facility which can become a major servicing hub in the region. New aircraft of Air India will not need any major repairs and overhaul in the first five years of operation and the MRO facility will become operational only after three years.

For its part, Indian has entered into two agreements -- with Snecma of France for servicing CFM 56 engines of its new fleet of 43 aircraft and with Bangalore-based Jupiter Aviation and Logistics for airframe maintenance.

With aircraft deliveries in India scheduled on a fast track over the next five years, MRO is all set to emerge as a big-time aviation business in the country. Air India is all set to get 17 new aircraft from Boeing by this year-end as part of its contract for the purchase of 68 aircraft.

Fleet expansions

Indian is waiting to take deliveries of 42 single-aisle A-320 family aircraft from Airbus Industrie as part of its deal with the European aircraft manufacturer for buying 43 new aircraft.

Among private carriers, Jet Airways has plans to buy aircraft worth $3.2 billion from Airbus and Boeing and IndiGo has ordered 100 A-320 aircraft. Kingfisher and Air Deccan have also opted for the A-320 family while SpiceJet has placed orders for Boeing 737-800 aircraft.

Clearly, Indian skies are getting crowded with the each passing year. This will not only put demands on airport infrastructure but carriers will also seek global players to provide MRO facilities for their fleet.

In the past, maintenance work meant short-term unforeseen repairs, but the focus today is on scheduled maintenance. Before a wide-body jumbo jet like the Boeing 747-400 is due for a main overhaul, it would have spent at least six years in intercontinental service, clocked more than 30,000 flight hours and flown a distance of some 15 million miles, the equivalent of more than 30 trips from the earth to the moon and back.

Advanced technology

"This is one of the many examples of the enormous progress made in aerospace technology. As recently as in the 1950s it was not uncommon for aircraft operating trans-Atlantic flights to experience technical problems. Even at the beginning of the jet age in the early 1960s, jetliners like the four-engine Boeing 707 had to go into the shop for a major inspection after only a few long-haul flights,'' August W. Henningsen, Chairman of the Executive Board of Lufthansa Technik, a major global MRO provider, said.

With the reliability of aircraft, engines and components increasing by leaps and bounds, the intervals between overhauls have also multiplied. As the modern jet engines are nothing short of technical marvels, they are the real long-distance runners. For example, each of the four engines of a wide-body jet generates up to 27 tonnes of thrust.

On takeoff, a fully loaded jumbo jet weighing about 400 tonnes has at its disposal a power equal to that generated by a power station. Before going for an overhaul, it will have spent an average of 12,000 hours in the air and flown nearly ten million kilometres, operating 12 hours a day, regardless of whether it was used on long-haul flights lasting ten or more hours each or in short-haul traffic with multiple takeoffs and landings a day.

The Lufthansa Technik chief said the all-time record is held by a jumbo jet General Electric CF6 engine that had put in more than 27,000 hours on the wing before going for major repairs. Assuming an average aircraft speed of 800 kilometres per hour that engine flew a distance equal to 50 flights to the moon.

He said Lufthansa Technik offers ECM (engine condition monitoring), a system that continuously monitors engines while they are in operation. Every three or fours hours during cruise flight, an aircraft equipped with ECM automatically transmits via satellite a large package of data to the company's diagnostic centre in Frankfurt.

In a modern aircraft, the system monitors some 30 different parameters, ranging from revolutions per minute to temperatures in various parts of an engine.

It enables engineers to detect a defect or malfunction early so that it can be repaired before causing any serious damage.

VINAY KUMAR
in New Delhi

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