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Old 3rd September 2005 | 05:16
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Blacksheep
Cunning Artificer
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Joined: Jun 2001
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From: The spiritual home of DeHavilland
That list illustrates something that has bothered me for several years. The lack of interest in maintenance by academia - maintenance is ignored and left to the technician or mechanic.

Large commercial aircraft are now mostly maintained under MSG3 Maintenance Programmes, backed by reliability monitoring to ensure the effectiveness of the maintenance programme. It is no longer a matter of stripping an aircraft down and reassembling it with new or overhauled parts. The maintenance engineer must exercise a greater degree of engineering judgment and most of us just don't have the academic training to fit us to that task.

The necessary skills for the new methods are not properly covered in the various license syllabi. We have to develop repair schemes and we do use graduate engineers in the 'back room' engineering offices. Unfortunately, a lack of understanding of maintenance issues often handicaps them. Neither the LAE nor the current graduate aeronautical engineers are ideal for the job. I'd like to see degree courses pay more attention to maintenance issues - the aging airframe, composite repairs, non-destructive testing, engine health monitoring and especially regulatory matters.

In short. Make maintenance a respectable academic subject - or even a complete degree - in its own right.
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