Extended maintenance intervals for the Airbus A380 |
| Romain Guillot |
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05 JUL 2017 | 252 words
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© Le Journal de l'Aviation - all rights reserved |
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This is a measure which was eagerly awaited by A380 operators and the unveiling of the A380plus by Airbus at the Paris Air Show enabled us to find out a little bit more on the future periods between scheduled maintenance inspections for the European super jumbo.
Airbus has been working on this project for months and the new scheduled maintenance programme should be added to the Maintenance Review Board Report (MRBR) next year, most probably in March.
Frank Vermeire, Head of A380 Marketing at Airbus, confirmed that the periods between major maintenance checks (C-Checks) would rise from 24 months or 12 000 flying hours to 36 months or 18 000 flying hours. This equates to the removal of one major check over a 6-year period, which considerably increases the aircraft's availability.
Even better, the 6-year check may even be reduced, with an immobilisation time down by 15%.
Finally, the light maintenance inspections (A-Checks), which until now were set every 750 flying hours, have just been extended to 1000-hour intervals (EASA validation).
For Frank Vermeire, the advantages of these Maintenance Planning Document (MPD) improvements for the plane are quite simple to grasp. Over one full year, the A checks save 2 days, the C checks another 3 and the major 6-year inspection an extra 1 day, a total of 6 extra days of operation per A380 and per year, which may potentially generate a reduction of up to 27 million dollars on the PV (aircraft cost) according to Airbus calculations (584 annual cycles, four-class cabin, use over 15 years, etc.).
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Romain Guillot
Chief editor
Cofounder of Journal de l'Aviation and Alertavia
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