DNA Explainer: How is the maintenance of airplanes done, why technical snags occur

With increasing incidents of technical snag and other safety issues cropping up in different airlines, questions on passenger safety is taken the front seat. There is an increasing worry in the aviation sector as to how to overcome these technical snags. Of late, three major airlines Vistara, SpiceJet, and Indigo faced technological glitches and other disturbances leading to flights taking emergency landing.

Every aircraft goes through testing at different levels with regular to intensive maintenance. Before flight, the pilot and maintenance crew together OK the instruments from its cockpit and despite that basic checks are also done almost daily. But this alone is not enough. The category of check point is from A to D. The method and timing of each test is different.

Read | Dubai-bound SpiceJet flight makes emergency landing in Pakistan

The maintenance aspect related to commercial flight depends to a large extent on regular to intensive maintenance and checkups. Flying a ship is probably easier than driving on the road, provided you are trained in it, but its maintenance part is equally serious. Of late there have been a series of incidents where disturbances have happened in the plane. 

Engine failure of Bangkok-Delhi Vistara flight

Vistara airline's Bangkok to Delhi flight underwent an engine failure on Wednesday, leading to the plane making a landing at New Delhi's Indira Gandhi Airport with only one engine. Reports suggest due to a fault in the electric system of the plane's engine, the entire engine failed.

The good part is no passenger was hurt in the incident. 

Smoke in the cabin of IndiGo's Raipur-Indore flight

Smoke was seen on Indigo's Raipur-Indore Airbus A-320 Neo aircraft on Tuesday. The crew of the aircraft noticed smoke in the cabin after landing at Indore airport. No passenger was hurt in the incident. 

Read | Vistara flight lands in Delhi on single engine, suffers electrical malfunction

SpiceJet faces 8 cases of technical snag in 18 days

Technological glitches with SpiceJet planes in India has been a reason for worry. All kinds of disturbances have happened in the planes of this airlines in last 18 days. In the last 18 days alone, there have been eight cases of technical failure in in SpiceJet planes. Three cases were reported on Tuesday alone. 

The DGCA has sent a show-cause notice in view of the continuous security lapses in SpiceJet planes. The company has been asked to respond within three weeks.

Who does the maintenance work of aircraft?

All the airlines companies are flying their planes in India. The maintenance work of all these aircraft is done by their own company or they have taken the help of external maintenance companies. By the way, Air India Engineering has been doing the maintenance of most of the airlines of India. Air India Engineer is a completely different company.

Despite selling Air India Airlines to Tata, this company is still with the government.

Aircraft maintenance is a big industry

At present, with the increase in the number of aircraft in the country, the work of aircraft maintenance has also increased a lot and this too is emerging like a big industry. Aircraft maintenance companies are involved in the repair, maintenance and overhauling of aircraft.

Companies like Airworks, Max Aerospace Group, Air India Engineering, GMR are working in this. The interesting thing is that a sister company of SpiceJet also does maintenance and repair work of the planes.

Checkup and maintenance of planes

The maintenance and checkup work of each commercial aircraft is divided into different categories. Usually, there is a general checking of every aircraft before the flight, which is carried out by the pilot or co-pilot with the maintenance crew.

In this, pilots check the equipments related to the cabin crew. Some checks are done every two days and some after completion of 300-400 hours of every flight. In this, there is also a thorough probe of the aircraft, which is called intensive probe.

Complex mechanical structure 

Understand broadly that the technical structure of an airplane is very complex. It has thousands of parts. Each one is assembled and turned into a flying device. There is a structure of cables and wires inside the whole ship. It is not possible to check all these daily. Then all the planes that are flying in the air, they are not all of the same kind, they are of different types. Their entire mechanics are complicated.

Types of aircraft inspection and maintenance

There are broadly two types of aircraft inspection and maintenance, one pre-flight checking of the aircraft and the other is the basic checkup.

Pre-flight checking of the aircraft

This involves checkup in the cabin by field staff workers along with the pilot and leave only after everything is OK. The pilot or co-pilot is largely responsible for the pre-flight checks. They check the exterior walkaround, visual inspection of required parts, inspection of sensors, probes, structural components, motors and cables (especially those related to gears).

Apart from this, the aircraft's fire detectors, warning lights, weather radar and other systems are also checked.

Basic checkup

This check is done almost every other day, ranging from the air of the tires of the plane, to an average, a cursory examination of the entire ship. Everything is checked by computer. Apart from this, during the flight, if the pilot or flight crew feels that something is causing problems in the aircraft, then they inform the maintenance team about it, they fix it or replace it.

Why are aircraft tires filled with nitrogen?

Aircraft tyres are filled with nitrogen because nitrogen is not affected by extreme cold, pressure, weather conditions in case of aircraft flying very high. It remains in the same way while it is not so with normal air. If normal air is filled in the tyres, then the effect of weather along with temperature and pressure on it is very high. Nitrogen remains the same in the extreme environment.