Aircraft Capability Statements – Aircraft Lease Return

Aircraft Capability Statements – Aircraft Lease Return

A capability is something which the aircraft can do, is capable of and is certified to do.

Some aircraft may have a capability, but not use it – an example might be ETOPS. Extended Twin Operations is a set of compliance rules that govern how an aircraft on two engines can fly with relation to vicinity of an airport.

Just because an aircraft can be ETOPS does not mean it is. (ETOPS can also be known as EDTO “Extended Diversion Time Operations”.

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Landing Gear and Back to Birth Record Considerations

IALTA

Moving on from the prior post we considered about landing gear Life Limited Part (LLP) / Safe Life Item (SLI) awareness, to now consider what we might look for in the review of the back to birth (BTB) history.

We noted that we need to establish the history of the part since it was manufactured and as such we need for each time the LLP/SLI was removed and installed the details of these occurrences to create a full history record for that part.

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Landing Gear and Back to Birth Record awareness

Landing Gear and Back to Birth Record awareness

Some part on an aircraft landing gear is defined as having a life span that cannot be extended. These parts must be disposed of at this point regardless of their condition; they are commonly known as SLI – Safe Life Items or LLP – Life Limited Parts.
The landing gear itself is a complex component and while some items can be replaced “on wing” (with the landing gear installed in the aircraft); there are many items that need the landing gear removed from the aircraft to accomplish replacement.

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Mitigating Risk – Safety Management Systems & Risk Management

SMS or safety management systems are an integral part of the airworthiness management function; we need to evaluate our known risk’s and ensure that we mitigate them and manage them to an acceptable level.

There will always be occurrences and the important factor is to capture them and then risk assess each occurrence or near miss. The more reports the safety management system gets then then more we can prepare for the risk that we face.

There are also controlling measures that we can put in place to reduce risk in many cases – the controlling measure is designed that it can allow a risk to exist, but we lower the value of the assessed risk to an acceptable or preferable level.

The control measures are commonly referred to in a hierarchy of is a list of the most preferable through to the least with regards to risk. If course to eliminate risk is the aim, but in reality, this is commonly not possible for many reasons including commercial factors

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Aircraft Reliability – Aircraft Engine Considerations

The engines fitted to an aircraft can often be one of the single most valuable assets and they are alsoone of the most complex.
It is important that the engines are maintained and monitored; the conditions the engines operate in means that while we can try to preserve life with actions such as reduced thrust take off’s where possible, there is also items we can not control such as the weather or animals in the air.

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