Location of Passenger Accommodations

LOPA stands for ‘Location of Passenger Accommodations”, which is a specification drawing of the interior design and layout of the cabin interior.

The LOPA is a diagram displaying the locations of the flight deck, attendant and passenger seats, lavatories, galleys, emergency equipment, windbreakers and other monuments. The Emergency Equipment Listing (EEL) is included as part of the LOPA and lists the part numbers of all emergency equipment.

If an airline wants to change the interior configuration of the cabin in a major way, they must do so through a Supplemental Type Certificate (STC).
The STC will generally cover the following changes:
·       Seating Layout (LOPA)
·       PSU Layout
·       Emergency Equipment Layout
·       Floor path marking system installation
·       Carpet installation
·       Curtin installations
·       Monument installation and removal

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Landing Gear Reviews – Lease Returns – Lease Delivery

When reviewing the Technical Records associated with a Landing Gear on a Lease Return it is common for a consultant to treat THE LANDING GEAR itself as a Hard Time Component (HT) and THE PARTS that make up the Landing gear in many cases are the Life Limited Parts (LLPs).

The maintenance requirements include overhauls in which the landing gear must be removed from the aircraft and sent to shop for them to be overhauled. This process alone is very expensive and time consuming.

The cost of a landing gear itself as a component is vast and so a review of the complete landing gear records is of paramount importance and depending on the age of an aircraft and the duration of a lease the landing gear may or may not be the original installed. You should have the certification for the landing gear installed; a EASA Form 1 and / or an FAA 8130-3.

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Engine Shop Visit

An engine shop visit (SV) is typically when an engine is sent to an overhaul shop for a form of maintenance.

During a shop visit there will be a scope of work carried out, the engine is usually sent to the shop for different reasons including reasons such as LLP (life limited part) thresholds being reached, or the engine may have worn beyond limits (borescope inspection finding) or have suffered damage (i.e., bird strike).

During a routine shop visit the engine is typically overhauled with regard to components & parts close to life limits or worn replaced / repaired as required. Repairs can be accomplished during the shop visits also dependant on the damage and AD/SB’s can be incorporated often also.

When considering a SV it is important to know the scope of the visit.
After the work is completed, we will have a work pack that is a detail for all the work carried out and also the engine current status which might include such documents as the following:

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What is the correct reference date for accomplishment of a maintenance task including AD required actions?

This question comes up regularly on Technical Record Reviews and a colleague of ours answered it perfectly today by means of a data driven answer and not an opinion, the answer can be found as FAQ no. 19496 on the EASA website.

For any maintenance task, including AD required actions, the date of release is the date when the Certificate of Release to Service (CRS) is signed by duly authorised certifying staff. Only certifying staff is competent to make the final airworthiness determination and therefore the CRS reference date does not necessarily coincide with the date when the individual maintenance task was actually performed and signed off by maintenance staff.

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The Open Item List – OIL

During a review of an aircraft, we will consider many different aspects of the records and aircraft configuration.

During the review we will have queries and concerns regarding discrepancies in the records we review.

This means we need a way for the lessee (returning or starting a lease on the aircraft) and the lessor to communicate and satisfy the queries and concerns.

For this we use what is called an OIL – Open Item List or similar.

This is basically a spreadsheet with multiple tabs regarding each of the different review aspects; for example (AD, SB/MOD/STC, Components HT, Components OCCM, Engines #, APU, Landing Gear, Repair File, Physical Observations etc.

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