Last time I 'scoped an engine ( a RR AE3007) it was @ four hours before the core was cool enough to safely insert said scope...VC10 wrote:There was a letter in the Daily Mail on Friday from a Capt Rod Elliot who explains how he would have kept Europe flying. In short, his theory was apart from keeping a/c away from the tickest part of the ash cloud he would have had boroscope inspections of the engines made mandatory after every flight. "This would have taken time , an hour or two per aircraft....". this is where, with all due respect to the pilots who frequent this board, he demonstrates his lack of knowledge of aircraft maintenance.
It would take at least an hour for an engine to cool suffiencently for a boroscope probe to be safely inseted into a combustion chamber and turbine assembly and than at least 90 minutes to inspect and then compare the results with the previous inspection followed by a further hour to close up the engine again. That is for a single engine, now if the aircraft is a 747 with 4 engine to do.........
Simple, I hear you say, have another team to do another engine. That assumes you have the equipment and sutably qualified staff to do the job, and doesn't take into account all the other aircraft that are turning up from about 06:00 up to lunch time that all require the same job doing on all their engines and
with the aircraft due to depart from about 10:00 onwards.
When you do get the aircraft away, you have to repeat the inspection process at the other end with the correct equipment and qualified staff. The destination is NRT or somewhere with a 2Hr turn after a couple of days of this you have built in ever increasing delays into the flying program.
I'm afraid Capt Elliot didn't think it through.
So you don't get the wrong idea, I'm not saying inspections wouldn't be necessary, but the logistics are not a simple as they would first appear
Paul
and to do it correctly we would allocate a full shift in elapsed time (12 hrs)
ttfn
Pete