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Aviation History
1983
1983 - 1864.PDF
Swissair has found cargo-handling easy on the A310 because it can take containers and pallets as those for previous aircraft after a long time in operation," Hupe notes. The airline did count on its A300 experience to speed up maintenance training on the A310, and has been caught out a little because aircraft commonality was not as much as expected. Lufthansa's Johann-Peter Hach says that many removals of A310 electronic equipment were not justified. "Some of the unreliable boxes we had at the beginning were reliable —we just didn't understand their behaviour. It took time to under stand the inter-relationships between the boxes: we had to go down the learning curve." In fairness to Airbus, he says, many software snags could show up only in commercial service, under highly specific operational circumstances. Lufthansa reckons it has worked out 90 per cent of what is incorrect in the aircraft's specifi cations: nearly all the problems have been "nitty-gritty pieces of inconsistency" in the software. The carrier has found 49 minor software snags in the FMS programming, and 56 in the Ecam instructions. All will be removed by a major software update package to be released by Airbus next February. The rate of symbol generator removal is higher than Lufthansa would want because the designers of the A310 did not foresee how heavily used and thus how hot it would become, with the result that not enough cooling space was allocated for each box. This will be improved when LSI chips replace printed circuit boards, allowing miniaturisation of the equipment. 954 Both carriers feel improvement is needed in the fuel quantity indication system, and in the cabin air pressure regu lators. They say that the original accuracy specification for the fuel quantity indi cators (to 1 per cent of max fuel load plus 1 per cent of actual fuel load) results in them carrying unnecessary extra fuel, thus not making the most of the A310's fuel-saving features. "The system is barely meeting the spec," says Lufthansa's Dr Hach. Both carriers asked Airbus to improve the accuracy by introducing a fuel density measuring device, but so far this has not worked properly. The manufacturer is working to upgrade the system fully; a short-term fix was introduced in mid- September. Lufthansa says it has learned a lesson: it wants the fuel-measuring system on its next aircraft to be accurate to 1 a per cent plus \ a per cent. The cabin air pressure regulators gave both carriers problems in early A310 service. They have now got round these by making the minimum equipment list specify that both regulators must be fully operational before a flight takes off. The airlines indicate that the problems arose both because of some lack of under standing on their part and design defi ciencies in the system. "The cabin pressurisation and bleed air system does not represent the present state of the art," says Swissair's A310 technical pilot Heinrich Baumann. "This is especially valid for the pressure control ler, and it should be changed. Airbus is looking at a redesign." Lufthansa points out that it has made several unscheduled cabin pressure regu lator removals because of its own inex perience. "The aircraft can climb away quicker than the schedule of the pressure controller, and this causes an Ecam warn ing," notes Dr Hach, "so perhaps some of the removals were unjustified; and we have learned that the FMS has to speak to the pressure controller". Lufthansa praises the excellence of the A310's airborne integrated data system (AIDS) which records a large set of engine and systems performance parameters in flight—particularly during cruise —to provide information for maintenance. The carrier says that the A310 is the first airliner ever where AIDS data is trans lated to plain language and printed in A hard copy on the aircraft during flight. mL Now staff at Lufthansa's stations carr^ use the print-out to relay aircraft condi tion information instantly to the airline's main computer using reservation termi nals. Eventually the process will be speeded up even more by reading the print-out with a light-pencil. Both Swissair and Lufthansa feel that the aircraft's built-in test equipment (BITE), which monitors instrument and equipment function for ground staff, is good, but still needs improvement. The problem is that different manufacturers have built the test kit and written the test software for their own equipment, and the various procedures differ. As a result, says Lufthansa, qualified personnel are needed to operate the equipment, and this was not the airline's original intention. They wanted any ground staffer to be able to read and act on the BITE analyses. Swissair's Arnold Klaus comments that, because of the lack of consistency of the BITE software, the test installations still produce some false nuisance warn ings and failure messages. But he points out that, as A310 launch customers, the' two airlines had to live with constant updates to systems and equipment as the aircraft approached certification; the test equipment had to reflect these changes, and the vendors had little time to work on the necessary software and equipment mods. Typical launchers' problems The carriers are still faced with materi als shortages as the manufacturers strive initially to produce enough equipment merely to meet basic aircraft installation requirements. Spares supplies, repairs, and the documentation for equipment and software mods have flowed slowly for the first few months. "We haven't enough control of the test and repair process yet," says Lufthansa's Werner Hupe. "But the vendors realise the problem and are doing their utmost to get things back to us quickly." The information and parts flow prob lem has also extended to Lufthansa's A310 simulator, built by CAE in Montreal and using Rediffusion SP2 visuals. The airline's simulator manager Wolf-Dieter Hass claims that, because the A310 uses electronic data processing and instrumen tation, Lufthansa's simulator is the first FLIGHT International, 8 October 1983
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