Is the much-anticipated shortage of commercial aircraft mechanics going to impact the ability of the U.S. military to keep its combined fleets prepared If you’re involved in any way with aircraft operations and/or maintenance, you can’t help but have heard that we’re standing on the precipice of what many believe will be an industry-changing shortage…

Aircraft wiring is critical to safe flight as it supplies data/signals to critical avionics/flight equipment. The FAA has recognized the importance of wiring and created regulations for the Electrical Wiring Interconnection System (EWIS). Two key factors have contributed to this increased focus: the aircraft fleet is aging and repeated flights can affect the integrity of…

Airlines are operating at lower cost margins than ever before, meaning a single misstep or grounding of an aircraft can potentially result in missed revenue targets. The cost of flight delays in the U. S. is estimated to be as much as $31 million annually, according to Airlines for America. As a result, technicians have…

Industry Leaders Discuss Key Issues Facing Aviation MRO The annual Aviation Maintenance magazine State of the Industry Leadership Insights has always attracted great interest from the MRO industry. We contacted a wide range of industry leaders, from airline MROs to independents, industry associations, airplane manufacturers and engine OEMs. We received replies from chairmen and chief…

Big Data, ATM, Next-Gen, SESAR, Harmonization, Aviation System Block Upgrade. Big Data, ATM, Next-Gen, SESAR, Harmonization, Aviation System Block Upgrade. All around us, technology is racing forward. Aviation has always been one of the leaders of that race. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the avionics, aviation electronics and ATC end of the business. …

The evolution of winglet technology traces farther back than many may think—back more than a century, when the English engineer, Frederick Lanchester, patented wing end plates in 1897 and Scottish-born engineer William Somerville attached end plates to the top wing of his biplane 13 years later. In recent decades, incited by soaring fuel prices in…

Thanks to the combination of an increased demand for new passenger aircraft and the global explosion of online shopping; passenger-to-freighter conversions are bringing new life to aging airframes. What does English inventor Michael Aldrich have to do with the rapid growth of passenger-to-freighter (P2F) conversions? Well, probably a lot more than you think. Aldrich invented…

This image shows the catastrophic failure of the acoustic screen wrapped around the P1/T1 probes on a Lear 60. Quiet Technology Aerospace (QTA) has developed an STC to address aircraft whose inlet cowls suffer from in-service corrosion. The company modifies these inlet cowls by replacing the inner barrel with a single-piece, carbon graphite barrel with…

The current global MRO market is around $79 billion, with the Middle East MRO market expected to account for about 8% of that, according to Jonathan Berger, Managing Director of Alton Aviation Consultancy, a New York-based aviation advisory firm. And while the global market is expected to grow at about 4% per year, the Middle…

Aviation Maintenance takes a look at some of the changes helicopter manufacturers are making to improve the ongoing maintenance of their aircraft in the field. Not to overstate the obvious, but helicopters are extremely complex flying machines. And being such, they require a lot of maintenance. Helicopters have a large number of moving parts, designed…