Maintenance Records Review – End of Lease – Maintenance Variations
An aircraft will have a maintenance plan that is specifically approved for that aircraft; certain aspects of the maintenance plan will be “customised” for its operation or environment with regards to additional maintenance tasks or the interval/threshold for a task being altered.
Typically, the lease will define conditions that the aircraft must meet for lease return and in many cases the maintenance plan will revert to OEM data. This is especially the case of the aircraft does not have a new customer and the lessor will maintain the aircraft; in many cases additional tasks and reduced intervals have an additional cost associated with them.
It is possible for an operator to have what are known as “Maintenance Variations” where they defer from the routine scheduled thresholds for maintenance checks. There are only certain tasks that this can be considered for and there are also certain criteria for this to occur, it is not a method to defer maintenance or cost.
Any such variation and details should be provided for you on a statement of variation(s) and detail(s) where they exist for the last check cycle. It is also important to consider that deferring a task does not extend the future interval – the next maintenance interval remains as it would regardless of the extension being applied.
As an example, from the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) airworthiness advisory memoranda (AAM) #01 shows some permitted deviations; although the NAA should approve this directly or the operator have advanced approvals from the NAA to perform such a deviation.
In the case of the operator holding an advance approval to deviate then this should be evidenced within the operators CAME (Continued Airworthiness Management Exposition).
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