Coming of age

An initiative of the federal government’s 2009 Aviation White Paper, the Ageing Aircraft Management Plan (AAMP) aims to identify the “current status” of Australia’s ageing aircraft fleet and, through an extensive three-stage process, develop a range of proposals to address any concerns CASA may have on the issue.

“There is an issue, the scope of the issue we’re still trying to get a handle on,” CASA’s manager – continuing airworthiness Mike Higgins explained when relating to the AAMP.

“There’s a bit of a dearth of information about individual aircraft out there in the Australian fleet, and we are designing some tools that may help capture that data to give us a more accurate view of the state of the 14,000 aircraft in the Australian fleet. ” Those tools will be developed within the various stages of CASA’s AAMP, the first of which was completed in December last year. According to CASA, Stage 1 has sought to outline the scope of the issue of ageing aircraft through the use of detailed independent analysis gathered during visits to a number of Australian airports by CASA in 2010.

“We have already spoken to engineers from around the country, and we have seen and taken some evidence of definite ageing aircraft issues,” Higgins said of Stage 1.

“Stage 2 will conclude with an agreed way ahead with CASA and the industry. ” Stage 3 will be a post-implementation review of any new regulations that arise from the program.

To date the AAMP has drawn up a total of 28 recommendations from Stage 1 research, with CASA yet to decide on which ones to implement until the AAMP is completed.

“CASA are going to look at those 28 recommendations. Some might be taken on board, some might not, some might be combined, some might be rolled out in various stages over the next two, three, four years. So we’re still really gathering data,” Higgins said.

“CASA hasn’t made any decision about which recommendations we’ll adopt yet.

And when I say adopt, they’ll be adopted and put into the formal consultation process with industry. There won’t be any carte blanche directives coming out without the proper formal consultation with industry. ” That will be reassuring to operators who experienced the turmoil caused by CASA’s sudden arbitrary grounding of older Cessna Conquests in 2007. Cessna had issued an unconditional life limit of 22,500 flying hours on the Conquest in August 2007, causing CASA to issue an immediate directive grounding all Conquests that had surpassed those hours. The grounding, which was initially supposed to last one year, was subsequently lifted on August 24 2010 with the implementation of a supplemental type certificate (STC). In development since 2008, the STC gave Conquest operators an aircraft life extension of up to 40,000 flying hours.

“That’s actually a fantastic example that we use in our presentation, as an example of where the manufacturer said the aeroplane will last for 22,000 hours and it’s grounded, and the company says that’s it. An Australian organisation [Aeronautical Engineers Australia] developed a program [offered by TAE] to pull it apart and do some testing and analysis and come up with an STC, which doubles the life the of the aircraft… So there’s a great example of just because the aircraft has reached the end of its design life, doesn’t mean it needs to stay permanently grounded,” Higgins said.

Once Stage 1 is complete, Stage 2 will see the formal consultation process over the implementation of Stage 1’s findings/ proposals regarding the operation of ageing aircraft with pilots, owners and operators and industry. That will be developed in the second half of this year.

In the meantime, an intermediate stage, known as 1+ is currently underway, with CASA officials giving a series of presentations to owners and operators across the country after Stage 1 had shown there was a significant knowledge gap around ageing aircraft issues.

“With a lot of the new guys coming through, who were taught on and have been maintaining aeroplanes that have been built say in the last 20 years to a high certification basis and so forth, they haven’t been exposed to some of the issues found in older aircraft. And the old blokes have now sort of moved on, and so you’ve got this gap of how to properly maintain the older aircraft with those older issues that are coming through today.

“In order to avoid getting some misinformed or ill-informed responses to the proposals, we thought we’d do the Stage 1+, which is really aimed solely at the aircraft owners and operators to provide some awareness of some of the ageing aircraft issues that are out there, in the hope that when we do enter the formal consultation process, the response will be more informed,” Higgins noted.

“We’re really keen to get to as many operators as we can before we get to the formal consultation phase. ” CASA’s Stage 1+ seminars will focus on three key points, including the differences between maintenance and airworthiness, encouraging operators to take a closer look at their aircraft, and clarifying the roles and responsibilities of aircraft maintenance and airworthiness between the owner/ operator and CASA itself. This kind of informal consultation is intended to give ageing aircraft owners/operators a better sense of the issues affecting their machines (such as airframe stress, deterioration and corrosion), and how best to counter them through appropriate safety precautions.

A key point Higgins highlights is the distinction between an aircraft that is well maintained by the book and one that is actually airworthy.

“The maintenance documentation that was created when the aeroplane was built assumed a particular life of the aeroplane – so many years, so many hours, so many cycles.

Now that we’ve gone beyond that, almost doubled the design life assumption, this maintenance data may not be appropriate, it may not be comprehensive enough.

“Your aircraft can be completely and fully maintained as per the documentation, roll out of the hangar with brand new oil, brand new filters, all the boxes ticked…but the aircraft can be unairworthy, and we talk about that a lot [in the seminars] and we show photographs of properly maintained aeroplanes which have in fact been found to be unairworthy,” he said.

One industry player which CASA has been working with to formulate the AAMP is the Regional Aviation Association of Australia (RAAA). RAAA technical consultant Matt Hobson said the association gave in-principle support to CASA’s plan.

“We’re generally supportive of their efforts and we’re appreciative of the opportunity to provide some input,” Hobson said.

“We’ve got our technical working group which is a subgroup of our members that are contributing to the CASA team.

This program is a work in progress. Our members are actively involved, contributing feedback to [AAMP project manager] Pieter Van Dijk’s team from CASA. ” Noting that the lower end of regional aviation in Australia is underpinned by ageing, out of production types such as the Piper Navajo and Chieftain and Cessna 402 series, Hobson reiterated the importance of the AAMP to ageing aircraft owners/operators in the regional aviation community.

“It is an issue that covers a variety of challenges of acknowledging that aircraft as they age do deteriorate to some extent as most mechanical objects do, and its supporting aviation, supporting industry to make sure that the tools, the mechanisms and the economics are such that we can still support those vital regional services.

“With most of the regional aviation assets within Australia, but not all operators, the model is to buy sound second hand equipment and maintain those aeroplanes to a high standard while recognising that they have a higher maintenance workload,” Hobson explained.

Hobson also warned private GA owners of buying a cheap aircraft and expecting cheap maintenance costs.

“It’s certainly the RAAA’s experience that a lot of private owners, a lot of non-commercial owners certainly, have the expectation that they’ll buy an older asset cheaply and then will be looking for cheap maintenance throughout the life of that aeroplane.

Now, the two don’t go together, so we’re hoping that CASA’s efforts will highlight to owners at all levels that there’s a sort of curve that runs that the older your aeroplane gets, the more money you can expect to spend to maintain the aeroplane,” he said.

While the RAAA supports the AAMP, Hobson admitted that there was a “level of concern” as to what the eventual ramifications of the plan will have for ageing aircraft owners and operators.

“I think that the RAAA is very supportive of safe aeroplanes and members [know] that safety’s our number one priority. We recognise as both the general aviation and regional aviation fleets age, that comes with challenges and we’re very supportive of working with CASA to…ensure the outcome of operating a gradually ageing fleet is a very safe one. ” Higgins is also keen to allay fears of the AAMP resulting in groundings of ageing aircraft types.

“One thing we do want to stress is that CASA completely and fully supports the ongoing operation of ageing aircraft, provided it can be done safely. There’s absolutely no intention of trying to ground aeroplanes over x number of years of age or x number of cycles, absolutely not. We’re more interested in airworthiness. ” For the RAAA’s part, Hobson is quick to reiterate that the Association’s participation in the program continues to be a work in progress, with air safety remaining at the forefront of the program.

“Our key point is that we’re supportive of any mechanism that enhances safety within aviation, and addressing ageing aircraft is something we believe is important, but we’ll reserve the right to provide further comment once CASA formulate the … regulatory mechanisms they suggest they’ll be using to do that. ”