More RNZAF Macchis Returning to Service

More Kiwi Aermacchi MB-339CBs to Fly in 1996

In February 1996, only eight to 10 of the Royal New Zealand Air Force’s 17 Aermacchi MB-339CB advanced jet trainers were flying. Of this number, six or seven were typically available for daily operations – more than for many months previously. Further steady work during 1996 is expected to bring more back into service after a difficult teething period that has been characterised by reduced availability and severe disruptions to pilot training.

More Kiwi Aermacchi MB-339CBs to Fly in 1996

With the advanced Aermacchi MB-339FD variant being one of three types under consideration for the RAAF’s Lead in Fighter, the New Zealand experience is clearly going to attract a good deal of attention. Although the FD contender differs significantly in detail from the RNZAF’s CB model, it will share the Rolls-Royce Viper 680-43 engine which has been causing the RNZAF so many headaches in recent years. The latest problems to afflict the RNZAF’s Macchis surfaced in early 1995, when cracks were found during routine maintenance in zero and first stage compressor blades of several of the 680-43 engines. The cracks were invisible to the naked eye and detectable only through use of specialist test equipment. A 300 hour restriction was imposed on engine life until the problem could be identified and cured. Since then, the RNZAF and Rolls-Royce have discovered that the cracks were the result of high crushing stresses in the blade/disk interface. Rolls-Royce is currently redesigning the interface; work is well advanced but when it will be completed is unclear — there are evidently delays and some areas of dispute. As an interim solution, Rolls-Royce has removed a sermetal coating from the base of the blades to reduce crushing stresses and provide a 200 hour life ‘Improved Standard’ compressor blade. All RNZAF aircraft will be operating with improved standard blades by the end of May this year. In service, the Air Force expects to extend the announced 200 hour life – a very conservative figure — if experience proves it is safe to do so. A further initiative designed to help overcome some of the RNZAF’s current problems is a logistics support review. A team led by Squadron Leader Barry Lennox is looking at current Macchi support processes, documenting current support problems, and also looking at alternative options for component repair. Alternative supply sources for some critical or ‘vulnerable’ components will be investigated, and the adequacy of current spares holdings will also be reviewed, along with Current Operational Level Maintenance and Phase Maintenance planning and work practices. A report was expected by the end of March 1996 and the Air Force hopes that the result will further improve in-house maintenance capabilities, and with that aircraft availability. Air Vice Marshal Carey Adamson summed up these promising developments as “cause for optimism”.

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