 |
Fleet Reliability - Corrective Action
Once you have identified the root causes of aircraft system reliability issues, you must choose a course of action to correct the problems. Depending on the nature of the problems – and the impact these problems have on your operation – you have a variety of options to choose from. Some of the more common corrective actions are:
1. Modifications: Should be pursued to correct design deficiencies and to incorporate new
features to existing systems. Modifications should only be undertaken when the whole fleet
is experiencing reliability problems.
2. Maintenance Program Adjustment: You may wish to change the content or interval of
a maintenance program task (servicing, inspection, etc) to identify and resolve reliability
issues before they begin to impact daily operations.
3. Troubleshooting Procedures: Occasionally, a chronic aircraft is fixed when a previously
unknown failure mode is found. To ensure that similar failures do not cause future chronic
aircraft, you may want to publish troubleshooting procedures that will help identify similar
failure modes in the future.
4. Preventive Maintenance Work Scopes: If certain reliability issues have a negative
safety or economic impact on your operations, you may want to consider adopting
preventive maintenance actions to address these types of problems. These work scopes
may include more frequent inspections, operational checks, servicing, or even component
replacements (before the components fail). Usually, preventive maintenance work scopes
are performed on components that have predictable life cycles. See the “Component
Reliability” tab of this website for more information on life cycle issues.
5. New Operational Procedures: Sometimes you can work around reliability issues by
changing the way you do business. For example, using ground air and electrical power more
frequently will allow you to use the APU less frequently – saving fuel and reducing wear of
the APU and its associated components.
6. Nothing: Some reliability issues are only minor inconveniences that have no effect on
safety and very minimal effect on economics. For these issues, you may simply bite the
bullet and live with the problem – or wait until the next scheduled heavy maintenance visit
to address the problem.
Each aircraft reliability issue presents its own unique set of circumstances and consequences. Your reliability program should include some sort of impact measurement (safety, cost, etc) to prioritize the extent and timeframe of implementing a corrective action program. Above all, make sure that the corrective actions you prescribe address all known root causes.
|
