September 2009 Archives

This happened sometime over the weekend and the way it's told to me in an email is that somewhere in the middle of it all was a technician who's been pretty badly knocked about. Hope it's not too bad.

Anyway, roughly speaking the fork-lift, for reasons I know not, hit the stairs that the guy was using to work on the engine/prop of this American Eagle / Executive Airlines ATR 72. Presumably at DFW.

Anyone know more???

That famous eagle is popping up everywhere.

Here for example in Shanghai at the joint venture plant opened last week with China Eastern Airlines to support CFM56 engines. Eventually expected to employ 800 people.







And here, on this Brazilian guy's arm for reasons unexplained, except perhaps that he just likes it.

At MRO Europe I had the chance to talk to Tom Masters, who runs the CFM engine products operation providing PMA parts, life-limited parts under STC, and support for CFM56-3 engines.

At last year's MRO Europe in Madrid, P&W said they expected to decide on addressing a second engine from a rival manufacturer this year. But that didn't happen and CEO David Hess played down the idea at the Paris Airshow.

But Masters says that the whole question is still firmly on the company's agenda and they're looking at a decision around mid-2010. Part of the question is whether to grow the CFM56 business into the -5 and -7, which is not as simple as it sounds. Those engines still have many patents in force, and of course the operators are more likely to be locked into support deals.

So what to look at next? I think the Rolls-Royce RB211 is an obvious possibility. There is plenty of gossip around about operators regretting some of the deals they signed with RR way back. But of course they can't easily get out of them either.

On the GE side I suppose CF6 is a possibility, and maybe the earlier CF34s, of which there are huge numbers of course. Any thoughts? Leave a comment.

British Airways? Thomsonfly? Aeroflot? I've been at the MRO Europe exhibition in Hamburg this week and right at the end came a curious announcement from Timco, the heavy maintenance house based in Greensboro, NC.

You'll remember the ludicrous state the US airlines and FAA got into at various points last year which started with a genuine compliance issue in Southwest and exploded into the groundings of hundreds of aircraft over a period of weeks. It all culminated in the insanity of United's grounding of its 777 fleet pointlessly leaving passengers stranded all over the world. In between there were assorted bizarre sagas involving American and Delta MD-80s and American ERJ-145s. A hideously embarrassing episode for the industry.

Well, pretty much since then there has been an epic effort underway to overhaul the US airworthiness directive system, basically to instill some commonsense back into it.

And now, under new administrator Randy Babbitt, the plan is out. There's also a press release.

Well, there you are, exactly what it says on the tin - we're launching an MRO blog for the aviation industry. And this is it.

I've spent a fair chunk of the last few weeks putting together a special MRO report for Flight International to coincide with the excellent MRO Europe event run by our competitors at Aviation Week. This year that's in Hamburg starting 22 September of course. Drop me a line if you'd like to talk to us. kieran.daly@flightglobal.com