The Hindu : Kerala / Kochi News : Naval Aircraft Yard crosses a milestone

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Thursday, Feb 03, 2011
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Naval Aircraft Yard crosses a milestone

Special Correspondent

— Photo: H. Vibhu

Success story: Seaking ASW helicopters at various stages of routine maintenance at the Naval Aircraft Yard in Kochi.

Kochi: The Naval Aircraft Yard (Kochi), one of the two such facilities of the Navy, is set to celebrate the golden jubilee of its service to naval aviation on Friday.

To mark the occasion, a national seminar on ‘Innovative Approaches to Sustenance of Naval Aviation Maintenance Infrastructure in the Coming Decades' will be held. Many serving and retired Navy officials, including former Navy Chief Admiral Arun Prakash, who served in the yard as Assistant manager (Air) in mid-1970s when it was still the Naval Aircraft Repair Organisation (NARO), are slated to join the festivities.

“We have a committed team comprising a civilian majority workforce besides service personnel and we work in close coordination with the industry,” Commodore HP Singh, the yard's Commodore Superintendent, said. Of the yard's 654 employees, nearly 430 are civilian personnel.

Begun by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Bangalore, in 1956 as a modest Fleet Repair Unit to repair and maintain Navy aircraft, the facility was taken over by the Navy on February 5, 1960, as NARO. Over time, it grew into a comprehensive industrial establishment with state-of-the-art facilities for repair of aircraft, engines, avionics and components.

On April 20, 1981, it was rechristened Naval Aircraft Yard, Kochi. The past two decades have seen NAY (K) embark modern-day facilities such as Engine Repair and Overhaul Facility, Centre for Avionics Repairs and Software Development, Structural Repair Facility and a host of workshops for component repairs of aircraft.

In 2001, wide-ranging facilities were set up under Project Ashok— named after air engineer Captain Ashok Sawhney— for the maintenance of Sea Harrier jump jets. Besides its Rolls Royce Pegasus engine maintenance and overhaul facility, the yard also sports a commendable Pegasus engine test bed facility.

Among the achievements of NAY (K) are modifications to Chetak helicopters for the first-ever aero magnetic survey of Antarctica in 1987; conversion of Islander aircraft from piston engine to turbine engine in 1996; and modification to Seaking helicopters to survive post-Pokhran sanctions.

In the past decade, the yard began executing with assistance from August Westland and HAL, recovery—bringing back to service—of seven Seaking Mk 42 B anti-submarine warfare (ASW) choppers. This, besides carrying out the routine repair and maintenance of Seaking helicopters.

The yard's indigenisation cell has been able to produce 242 non-flight critical items like aircraft panel and seat cushion. It has an IT cell with LAN to automate its day-to-day functioning.

In 2000, NAY (K) secured accreditation to ISO 9001:2000 standards and in 2010, it received the Aerospace Certification of AS 9100B standard.

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