Part I
The aviation industry is highly regulated in accordance with international safety standards. The regulatory process begins with the design, manufacture and certification of an aircraft and continues throughout the life of the aircraft.
An approved maintenance programme ensures that an aircraft continues to be airworthy throughout its lifecycle by a process called “continuing airworthiness,” which captures the wear and tear on the aircraft. It is an integral component of the process.
The maintenance programme is a document containing the minimum maintenance requirements for an aircraft to ensure its continuing airworthiness, and is prepared from a Maintenance Review Board (MRB) Report.
The membership of the MRB consists of the aircraft manufacturer, airworthiness authorities, operators and industry specialists. The MRB is a standardised process used as an acceptable means of compliance to develop scheduled maintenance instructions, thus ensuring the objectives of an efficient aircraft maintenance programme.
The MRB report is approved by the state of design of the aircraft and contains maintenance tasks to be accomplished on the aircraft for continuing airworthiness.
The tasks are categorised into aircraft inspections for damage, replacement of time expired or damaged parts, servicing of oils and fluids and system functional checks. All tasks are listed in tabular form with the intervals for accomplishing the tasks such as flying hours, landing and takeoff cycles or calendar time.
The intervals are determined by computer modelling and probabilities that predict when components or structural parts are likely to fail so that preventive maintenance action can be taken.
The numbered task cards contain the detailed instructions for accomplishing the maintenance task in accordance with the procedures contained in the aircraft's approved maintenance manuals. Task cards also list all the specialist tools and materials required for the maintenance tasks.
For convenience, airlines prepare a maintenance schedule that groups maintenance tasks into categories such as an in-transit check, a turnaround check, an overnight check and lettered checks such as A, B, C and D. Of the lettered checks, the D-checks have the highest work content and the A-checks have the lowest work content.
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For the purpose of maintenance opportunities, D-checks, which mainly consist of structural inspections, are segmented and integrated into the C-check group. Likewise, B-checks have been segmented and integrated into the A-check group.
The maintenance schedule must be approved by the airworthiness authorities of the state which issued the airline’s air operator’s certificate (AOC).
Maintenance activities such as those in a C-check are further classified as routine tasks – which are tasks that originate from the maintenance schedule – and non-routine tasks, which are tasks generated by a routine task. For example, if a hydraulic leak is discovered
