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Aviation History
1983
1983 - 0029.PDF
Delta Air Lines staff prepare the pylons on which they will hang the CFM56s of the DC-8-61, one of 13 which the airline is converting to -71 standard—a new 212-seat long-range transport for $15 million. The conversion is now taking many fewer than the initial 42,000 man-hr Few remanufacturers will sign fixed- price, fixed-date contracts for major refit jobs. They should be expected to do so for routine maintenance contracts. If un foreseen problems arise, and cost-control and dates appear to be slipping, the cus tomer's engineer will expect complete frankness and access to all the worksheets and technical records. (Some remanu facturers will tell you that customers' rep resentatives sometimes know what goes on better than the shopfloor does.) The customer is really looking for an organisation which he can see is master of its schedules and programmes. Technical capability is taken for granted, being manifest in the remanufacturer's airworthiness-delegated design approval, stress and drawing offices, fibreglass and sheet-metal capability, avionics clean- room, machine shop, paint shop, and FLIGHT International, 1 January 1983 departments specialising in engines, instruments, hydraulics and so on. Customers know they are in especially good hands when the remanufacturer has his own training school, where the cus tomer's engineers are converted to type. But what about management? This is a difficult area because even when the sur vey and inspections are completed—with particular reference these days to the SSIDs or supplementary structural in spection documents—it is impossible for anyone to know how many snookers are lying in as yet unopened nooks and cran nies of the aircraft. The professionals will aim to get the SSIDs done in the first ten days, the non-destructive-testing people working round the clock with eddy- currents and X-rays and ultrasonics to back up their magnifying glasses and eye balls. The cost of an initial refit will be less if the customer wants it packaged up with a maintenance arrangement. The fee nor mally charged for a survey will be "on the house", as will some of the refit work, if the remanufacturer can look forward to a long-term maintenance contract. These are bread and butter—boring, perhaps, compared with the big refits, but sound day-to-day business. If the customer base is far from the re manufacturer, A, B and C checks will be done with the support of a local mainte nance organisation working under the re- manufacturer's approvals and under the supervision of his engineering staff. For major work such as D-checks the aircraft might be flown to the remanufacturer's base. If the customer has an engine failure in the Caribbean or somewhere far from major support, a three-engined ferry back to remanufacturer's base might be more economic than flying a spare engine, work-cards, components, and supervisory staff out to the aircraft. (Incidentally, there are now so many good JT3Ds on the market that it very often pays to buy one than to repair or overhaul.) Maintenance work is priced as a rate per flying hour over, say, a five-year period—in round figures $500 per flying hour for a 707. This does not cover any new airworthiness directives and service bulletins. The customer should expect one invoice a month, mutually preferable to "as-incurred" bills. Three 707s flown for 6,000hr total a year at a typical flying- hour rate of about $450/hr means a monthly maintenance budget for the oper ator of $225,000. Work-starved aerospace manufacturers are beginning to encroach upon the re- manufacturers' markets, especially those of the component companies. "We de signed it, we built it, we tested it. We're also the best people to maintain it," proclaims one British equipment company. As yet the big aircraft manufacturers are trying so hard to sell new aircraft that they hesi tate to spoil the market by refurbishing old ones—though their military remanu- facturing work may signify a trend. At Boeing Wichita you can see the original manufacturer re-engining USAF KC- 135As with CFM56s; and British Aero space Bristol is converting ex-BA Super VClOs into RAF tankers. How does the customer know that the remanufacturer won't get carried away by perfectionism? Some aircraft engineers, it is said, would goldplate their work given half a chance. And the more you look into an old aircraft structure (as into an old house) the more expensive news you can find. The customer's fear is not that the job will be skimped, but that it might be elaborated. If that's the worst that can be said of the remanufacturers, the custom ers are in good hands. S3 33
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