Aircraft Component Repair and Retooling

Aircraft Component Repair and Retooling

The first legal guidelines were passed in the United states to regulate civil aviation in the 1920's. Of specific importance was the Air Commerce Act 1926, which required pilots and aircraft to be analyzed and licensed, for problems to be properly investigated, and for the establishment of safety principles and navigation aids, under the Aeronautics Branch of the Department of Commerce.

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) repair stations focus in evaluating and maintaining pneumatic elements for commercial, business and military aircraft. Operating sophisticated tools designed to meet the high-quality requirements of the FAA and the airline industry, the repair stations are able to diagnose and repair equipment to the standards recognized by the OEMs.

Maintaining properly repaired items on the aircraft might not involve system critical components. But just like a chain, the weakest links can bring it all down. Aircraft parts can be ruined in a multitude of distinctive ways. Some of the more widespread causes can be lightning, engine failure, metal fatigue, delamination, fire, bird strikes, ground damage and of course, human factors. Metal fatigue and delamination as well as the other damage causing examples are perfect opportunities for FAA repair stations to swiftly repair the impacted pieces of equipment rebuilding them to their high operational standards.

With cooling turbines/starters/PDU's FAA repair stations can setup test cells to test out air turbine starters, air cycle machines/cooling turbines and PDU's from the smaller corporate/commuter types through the newest generation of wide body commercial aircraft. With separate computerized test consoles located outside of the test cell, housing all guages and controls allows the technicians to maintain highly precise measurement. Electrically Driven Fans, Motors & Auxiliary Components can be examined in additional test cells that are setup to test AC and DC electrically driven fans, motors and other electrical accessories. Finally, valves are generally tested yet again in another test cell containing a valve test console, universal valve test stand and high-flow altitude chamber for pneumatic valve testing at less than ambient pressures. This cell contains all controls for low (105 PSI) and high pressure (350 PSI) air and vacuum.

The National Transportation Safety Board (2006) reports 1.3 deaths per hundred million vehicle miles for travel by car, and 1.7 deaths per hundred million vehicle miles for travel by air. Those are not passenger miles. If the airplane has 100 people, then the passenger miles are 100 times higher, making the risk 100 times lower. These are just a couple of the procedures that repair stations take into account when repairing and retooling aircraft elements. This level of quality and administration allows us to with confidence state that air travel is the most secure in terms of deaths per passenger mile.