Airlines perform aircraft maintenance in order to ensure aviation safety and schedule punctuality. Sitting alongside this is the desire to also perform efficiently; arranging the manpower to have the optimum level of competence requires considerable effort to ensure that the availability matches the requirement.

Whilst the “almost” universal approach to large aircraft maintenance afforded by MSG 3 delivers the potential of a very effective task-oriented maintenance program, the very real challenge presented to planners is how to decide on the best way to package these tasks so that the most effective work scope may be compiled to align with the available maintenance capacity.

Within every company exists the balance between availability, utilization, and maintenance requirements. To fully understand the criteria that are applicable and to make focused decisions becomes the key to optimising the cost of maintenance.

We should in addition ensure that we prioritise safety at all times. Maintenance cost savings, which can be driven by effective optimization, can be significant and generate a real advantage to the organization, for example, by delivering a commercial opportunity for increased operation.

There will also be unexpected events, defects, or other maintenance findings that require additional actions, for example, borescope inspection or structural repair requirements.

The goal of optimisation is twofold: to reduce the number of maintenance events and, at the same time, free up the actual hangar time required for the fleet. Whilst this opportunity is of course more relevant to larger fleets, it is still possible to make significant savings even with a single aircraft.

The goal is to optimise the task yield to as close as the theoretical maximum and in so doing to avoid unnecessary repetition of the same task, which, if magnified across the fleet, would be a significant expenditure in any business year.

An effective short-term program for managing maintenance manpower supply will consider the competence management and oversight program to review and act on training plans, recruitment policies, certification requirements, and how to optimise or to develop a grouping or buddy pairing system approach.

It is necessary to actively manage the deferred defect findings most efficiently by maintaining the correct spare holding and avoiding the necessity to rob components, which will ultimately create the need to repeat the task twice.

Utilising computer systems is a major benefit to support the planning process; however, it is essential to ensure that we have an experienced training and competent planning workforce and to recognise that the computer is a tool to support the function, which still needs to be managed.

Sofema Аviation Services offers a range of Regulatory and Vocational training to comply with the requirements of EASA.

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