Aircraft Lease Transitions – Structural Repair File & Repair Categories
An aircraft will over its life have repairs carried out on it; these can be based on accidental damage or could be from environmental exposure for example.
As the damage is found it will be assessed and ultimately repaired – noting the repair may be a series of inspections and leaving the damage “as is”.
One important concern with the damage can the ICA (instructions for continued airworthiness) and this is where we consider a repair “category”.
The ICA are what we have to do in order to maintain the airworthiness of the aircraft and based on a
repair being carried out there may be reduced and or additional instructions that must be now
carried out.
The common repair categories are A, B and C it is important as this will impact on the AMP (Approved Maintenance Programme); we can see repair categories below for an example:
Category A
Permanent Repair. The re inspection for this repair is covered in line with the inspection intervals as per the AMP (Approved Maintenance Programme) and need no reduced inspection intervals.
Category B
Permanent Repair. The re inspection for this repair is reduced and so attracts additional inspections to be incorporated into the AMP (Approved Maintenance Programme) in order to remain in a compliant condition for Airworthiness.
Category C
Temporary Repair. This repair is not permanent and will require a permanent repair to be completed within a certain period as defined by the authorisation approving the repair. It is worth noting that the temporary repair may also attract reduced inspection intervals or additional inspections to remain in a compliant condition for Airworthiness.
This is an important part of the structural review as a reduced interval inspection Category B would typically form a part of the aircraft AMP, where Category A has no requirement to do so.
During a lease return, normally temporary repairs (Category C) are not accepted – typically these are short term solutions aimed at either getting the aircraft to a location to perform the repair or to a major maintenance visit where ground time is allocated to perform a repair.
Please check out the course we offer on considering the aircraft structural repairs HERE