GAF has too many Christmas trees
 

Der Spiegel claims GAF has few working aircraft and relies on hangar queens for parts:

German fighter jets unable to fly and mechanics forced to borrow spare parts, claims magazine - Telegraph

"O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
wie treu sind deine Blätter......."

Interesting they're supposedly borrowing parts to "save" money. All this in fact does is treble the manpower bill when the part has later to be removed and refitted to the donor, still leaving the original job.

Nothing new here, move along please.
"Robbing" was all part of the job in the RAF, at least when I served on 43 Squadron (`70s), everything replaceable would be robbed to increase the overall squadron serviceability due to spare part shortages, especially avionics.
Often finished up with one "Hangar Queen" that looked like a skeleton in the corner of the hangar. That included robbing Spey engines, not the quickest component to move to another airframe. any black boxes, Air Data Computers, Gyro platforms, all part of the service. Nothing has changed really. ;)

And the wheel, she continues to turn.
Providing an engineering solution to a supply issue.
Latterly it was renamed 'Cannibalization' (A rose, by any other name).
A further problem with this process was the inherent issue of protracted functional checks associated after fitting the replacement item...

ShotOne, why remove and refit the 'borrowed' part onto the 'doner' instead of just fitting the new part to it?

Of course in a perfect world there would be a whole shelf full of every spare needed in the Tech Stores thus preventing the hanger queens, maybe the hanger queen should be struck off Sqn Strength and added to the Type IPT's strength while it's awaiting them to source the missing bits?

"Nothing new..." Perhaps not, but if the numbers are half as bad as stated, surely worthy of debate?

It's not even saving money...why not just buy 1/3 the number of airframes and enough spares.

Canibalization is common around the globe. Sapper, I think you answered your own question... if there was a perfectly good replacement part sitting on the shelf, then the techies would grab it first- lot's less work. The problem is the part is NOT on the shelf when it is needed.

Spares are never sexy enough to be be properly addressed in procurement programs. Programs are mostly for hardware, and routinely under-address spares. Purchace cost vs. life cycle costs, and both are usually low balled. Bean counters hate to pay for stuff sitting on the shelf, and full life cycle costs are rarely built into programs. Winning the bid on the initial build is only half the victory and may be a wash profit wise, the real money comes from follow on orders, upgades and maintence support (both routine and depot level work) Even more so if you hold the codes and the rights on any work- you have the customer over the barrel.

Aye, I get the xmas tree bit, had more than one part of something myself in the past but I was questioning the extra work to remove a just fitted part to put it back from where it came from when It would seem less work to leave it where it is and simply fit the new part to the doner.

This was something the "GAF" <rolleyes> actually originally did with Tornado. However they learnt fast at TTTE.............:(

Unlike normal modes of transport the turnaround time on repairing aircraft parts can run into months, hence the need to rob, the trouble you get is once you have whipped a part off an aircraft thus rendering it unserviceable it can rapidly become a target for additional spares.

I remember in the 70's an RAF Puma that was Stored at Fleetlands, it probably had about 50 hrs on it in total, but was a bare shell minus everything including the tail boom aft of the fuselage. BTW, it did fly again.

At Brize on the Ten's I felt sorry for the guys in base on major inspections as we would often rob bits off them at night, that or the war reserve spares.

I remember in early 80's the GAO took the DoD to task over this very topic across all 3 services. The extreme case was the USAF wing which had canibalised a whole squadron, while still declaring it as operational on the ORBAT. The aircrew ISTR were spread across the other squadrons on the wing.

On one of many visits I had around a certain windswept airfield on the Lincolnshire Wolds, during the 1980s.

The ASSF was full of Christmas trees, mind you I presume it helps if you fill in the paperwork to say what you took off;)

V1

Exactly - we never had to return a part to its original aircraft because:

1. parts are not permanently assigned to aircraft.

2. there is a formal process in the US military (USN & USMC, at least) for cannibalization of parts - there is a specific maintenance code for the action, and a specific and simple process to transfer the unfilled parts order from the original aircraft to the aircraft cannibalized from. Then, when the part comes in, it is simply installed on the "hangar queen", and all is good.

This wondrous engineering practice was once described by a colleague as "Borrowing the tyres off your mate's car to get yours through the MoT"...:\

Even if the part doesn't have to be replaced on the donor (or doner) aircraft it's still double the man hours , plus paperwork. And there are situations where it's a requirement to restore the originals. Of course it happens, just that it's not, by any stretch, a money saver.

Some years ago the RAAF had quite a few Hornets sitting around awaiting engines [overhauls and repairs]. This was caused by our material mob not pre-ordering enough spares. One cannot snap fingers and acquire parts and components. the OEM's don't hold warehouses full of bits due to cost etc. Xmas treeing aircraft has been around since the Wright Bros. The airlines swap parts or take bits off others on the line or in maintenance all the time.

Doesn't always work that way either. Entire squadron was unable to put up an airframe to carry out its primary role for want of a particular black box. Stores said none available, on order. AEO on making a personal check of stores found six sitting on the shelf. Can't have was the answer, minimum stock.

"The airlines swap parts...take bits off others..." True, but they a) are usually required to be returned to donor aircraft due leasehold legalities and b) someone has to explain and justify the extra cost of the manhours.

Plus you then have to update the all the component hours, lessors I can agree with as you could get less scrupulous companies putting high houred components on the one being returned.


The one I could never get my head around was the 1/2 life component exchange that we did on the Royal Flight VC10's, I could see the reasoning behind no components over half life etc, but when you have 4 serviceable engines with a trend log to back up their reliability, pulling one, two or even on one occasion three engines and replacing them with lower houred unknown engines from the bay seemed barking to me.