Engineering reliability and maintenance dispatch issues in airline operations

Monitoring an Aircraft's Reliability System:

In the civil aircraft industry, one of the most critical areas is the operational or dispatch reliability of an aircraft. For any airline, the reliability system of an aircraft is very important since its effectiveness lessens flights delays and cancellations. The effective working of this system to achieve its functions also results in greater operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and flexibility. Dispatch or operational reliability is defined as the percentage of scheduled flights that depart without any technical delay that exceeds 15 minutes or a flight cancellation. It's important for any airline to ensure that the reliability systems of its aircrafts are effective since this result in less costs and greater revenues for the airline. The reliability system of an aircraft is largely affected by both technical and non-technical factors with the technical ones resulting from the decisions made by designers. On the other hand, the non-technical factors that affect an aircraft's reliability system include maintenance, operations, management and logistical aspects by operators.

Function and Workings of a Reliability System:

The main function of the reliability system of an aircraft is to ensure that there is increased safety and reliability of the aircraft for the purposes of customer satisfaction, cheaper maintenance costs and increased revenues. The workings of the reliability system include a broad range of activities since it covers various parts and components of an aircraft. The other significant function of the reliability system of an aircraft is to help in achieving greater dispatch and operational dependency. An aircraft's reliability system coordinates the systems, sub-systems, components and various parts of the aircraft to ensure that they work effectively to achieve their specific purposes. Through this coordination, the reliability system basically serves as a feedback tool regarding the technical functioning of the aircraft's systems and components.

The reliability system of an aircraft also works to ensure that events such as air turn back or diversions, cancellations and aircraft substitutions are kept at the minimum level. Consequently, this contributes to high aircraft availability and lesser costs of operations of the specific aircraft. The workings of an aircraft's reliability system involve the reduction of unscheduled removals of engine and APU, the major components of an aircraft cost driver components ("Maintenance Management Services," n.d.).

Problems / Pitfalls of a Reliability System:

It's important for aircraft operators as well as engineering and reliability managers to identify the significance and impact of an aircraft's operational reliability and effectively address problems associated with it. Generally, there are several problems/pitfalls that are associated with an aircraft's reliability system including

Complexity and High Costs:

This is the major problem that the operators of an aircraft face since operational reliability of an aircraft is a design requirement that is complex and requires high costs of improvement for in-service aircraft (Bineid & Fielding, 2006). These complexity and high costs of improvement emanate from the fact that the dispatch reliability must be developed in the design from the outset. The improvement of such dispatch reliability includes design improvement actions and corrective procedures to a very limited level.

Aircraft Inefficiencies:

The effective operation and functioning of an aircraft is largely dependent of the efficiency of its reliability system to achieve its functions. One of the major pitfalls of a non-functional reliability system is that it results in several aircraft inefficiencies including flight delays, cancellations and customer dissatisfaction. According to the findings of a research, the existing aircraft dispatch reliability systems have low reliability levels that affect the efficient operations of an airport's facilities. Decreased dispatch reliability lead to flight delays and cancellations, reduced operational efficiency and lesser revenues.

Monitoring an Aircraft's Reliability System:

The traditional aircraft reliability system analysis programs were based on the fact that all the components and parts of an aircraft required periodic service. While the times between component overhaul were managed strictly, an entire aircraft was occasionally disassembled, serviced and re-assembled in order to maintain high safety levels. However, new techniques were later developed that were focused on mechanical performance instead of the prediction of failure. The methods were jointly known as reliability control largely because of their major emphasis on maintaining failure rates below a particular fixed level (Khouzam, 2010). Generally aircraft reliability system analysis programs should be designed to meet special requirements of the specific operator in consideration of both the operational and environmental conditions. The evaluation of reliability system should contain the desired characteristics of every operator and be reflected in analysis program. Generally, an operator's reliability system analysis program is in four major categories namely systems or components, powerplants, aircraft or engine analysis and inspections as well as structural inspection or overhaul ("Maintenance Control," 2007).

Up -- front Reliability System Analysis Methodology:

As the manager responsible for engineering and reliability in airline whose aircraft systems / components are contributing to low reliability, I would implement the upfront reliability system analysis methodology. This methodology will allow aircraft system designers to conduct thorough analyses to assess various alternatives and explore several options during design cycle in order to develop a superior design that provide high reliability. This methodology also enables designers and engineers to quickly evaluate a number of design variations while exploring various ideas that may not be practical to test in hardware. Since a number of aircraft systems/components are already contributing to low reliability in the airline, an up-front reliability system analysis methodology is appropriate. This is largely because the methodology will enable the aircraft designers to develop the desired dispatch reliability in the conceptual or preliminary stage of the aircraft.