Originally Posted by
NutLoose
I always looked on aircraft engineering as being a bit like a Gynecology, except the hole tends to be smaller, further away and on the whole tends to smell better too.......
Wasn't the short sterling bomber designed so the wings would fit in a standard RAF hangar? and also that BEA specified a weird seating capacity for the Viscount ? and when asked after it was built, it turned out they specified it to the seating capacity of their passenger buses in use, makes sense really......
Frivolously put perhaps, but you make the very important point that maintainability is only one of a massive list of things that need to be got right (and will all get compromised against each other) in designing an aeroplane.
Use of standard components, manufacturing cost, performance, fitting in a particular hangar/hold/deck, capacity, evacuation, fire, crashworthiness, flying qualities, payload, maintainability, structural strength, fatigue lift....
... all has to be adequate. So, maintainability (and many other things other than primary safety) get compromised.
Hard to remember when you exist in an world where one consideration (e.g. maintainability) is important. Pilots are the same - hard to get many pilots to think far beyond what's in the cockpit.
G