Aircraft Maintenance Technology

MAY 2014

The aircraft maintenance professional's source for technological advancements, maintenance alerts, news, articles, events, and careers

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C O M M E R C I A L M R O VISIT US AT MRO Europe October 7-9, 2014 Madrid, Spain Booth#: 384 A ircraft Maintenance Technology magazine recently sat down with Republic Airways Holdings Vice President of Technical Services Thomas Duffy to talk about the new and inno- vative techniques and approaches Republic is using to maintain its fleet, as well as some of the new trends in the regional aircraft mainte- nance arena. "First off, because we have technologically advanced airplanes, our maintenance is by nature sophisticated and refined. We operate a large fleet of Embraer 170s and 175 aircraft, so we use an Embraer product called the AHEAD (Aircraft Health Analysis and Diagnosis), a computerized maintenance tracking system which transmits cautions and warnings in real-time via ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting). That allows us to be more prepared to accept the airplane and return it to service as quickly as possible. "Second, we gather the FHDB (fault history database), and from that we've developed proactive tasks to go after a component that perhaps is alerting an anomaly before we have a failure. "As far as AOG (aircraft on the ground), the innovative and effective techniques for those aircraft get right back to AHEAD. Because we're getting electronic messages while the aircraft is in flight, we're better prepared to react, particularly if we're going into a station that's not a hub. If we have to move a part, the advance notice gives us the ability to move it more quickly and ultimately the aircraft returns to service more quickly. When you go AOG in REPUBLIC'S VP OF TECH SERVICES TALKS MX TECHNIQUES, TRENDS Company's technologically advanced aircraft provide critical data, give crews jumpstart Wireless maintenance carts in use at Republic Airways. a hub, it's easier to recover. When you go AOG in a Providence, RI, or a Bangor, ME, it's more difficult. "As far as new trends, on our Q400 aircraft, we have a Pratt & Whitney product called FAST (Flight Data Acquisition Storage and Transmission System), which uses cellular technology. Every time the aircraft lands, it phones home, giving us fault codes that allow us to quickly troubleshoot the aircraft. Because we have it on the fleet of Q400s, it gives us the ability to evaluate the return on investment before we address it for the fleet. "Another new thing going on at a grow- ing number of our hangars (Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland) is using wireless maintenance carts, which allow our mechanics easy access to our servers for part orders, job cards, manuals, etc. It's a stand- alone unit with a screen, keyboard, battery, and printer that can be wheeled anywhere around the aircraft. That's a huge timesaver, because it saves our crews from walking across the hangar to access a desk computer or check inventory at the parts department. The wire- less cart has all the info right there. "In general, my vision is, the next big leap in regional aircraft maintenance is to continue to embrace technology. Now that we can capture thousands of data points on the airplane, our challenge is to figure out how to better use that information to develop ways to detect abnormal data and go after those events." Duffy has nearly 30 years of experience in the airline industry. A licensed A&P; mechanic, Duffy joined Chautauqua Airlines in March of 2002 as director quality assurance and engi- neering. He was promoted to vice president technical services for RAH in September of 2006. Before joining Chautauqua, Duffy held senior management positions at several compa- nies, including Midway Airlines, Braniff Airlines, and Flight Options Inc. — Compiled by Scott Thien, Republic manager of Corporate Communications AMT_16-20_CS CommMRO.indd 18 4/17/14 4:13 PM

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