Commercial flying is the safest way to travel, and high standards ensure that accidents are rare and becoming rarer. However, many people think about pilots and pilot training when thinking about air safety and ignore another critical component: aircraft maintenance. Here are a few facts about how simple mistakes can lead to disastrous results and how companies avoid them.
Checklists
When an aircraft manufacturer unveils a new aircraft, they also create support material. Pilots and trainers learn how to fly from this material, and mechanic learn how to maintain the place. Every maintenance task is given a thorough checklist that covers the entire procedure, and company are obligated to enforce these checklists. These checklists are similar to those used by pilots, and they go a long way to preventing small mistakes people are prone to making when performing a job by memory.
Strict Supervision
Aircraft maintenance requires a number of employees. Today, however, no job can be marked as complete if a supervisor doesn’t sign off on the work. Using checklists and other logs, people performing the work detail the steps they took. Furthermore, supervisors often perform visual checks of the work before marking it as complete. Everyone makes mistakes, and having more eyes on the project increases the odds of catching potentially catastrophic slips.
Computer-Aided Work
Increasingly, companies are relying on software tools to help log information and provide outlines for maintenance. Paper-based solutions can cause clutter to build, and it’s easy to lose important documents in the maintenance hanger. Aircraft maintenance software provides a one-stop solution that can be accessed from a portable device, ensuring that information is easier to find. Software can help streamline operations, and it makes archiving data far simpler. Modern technology makes maintenance faster and safer than ever before.
Effective Work Environments
Guidelines also create certain workplace requirements. Employees in the maintenance field perform potentially dangerous work, but regulations ensure they’re afforded reasonable protections. Furthermore, rules now require that workers receive a certain amount of sleep, which reduces the likelihood of mistakes. Even simple elements play a critical role; proper lighting, for example, helps maintenance workers operate more efficiently and catch mistakes.
Supply Lines
Modern airliners contain millions of parts, and ensuring workers have the right parts is critical as using incorrect components has lead to disastrous crashes in the past. Counterfeit parts have been a problem in the past as well. Modern aircraft maintenance entails carefully managing bolts and other small parts of aircraft, and authorities have clamped down on the illegal sale of counterfeit components.
The safety of modern air travel is no accident. While pilots and aircraft manufacturers get a bulk of the credit, aircraft maintenance workers are also held to high standards. Thanks to the field’s maturity, maintenance work is done to the high standards that help make the industry so safe. If you want to learn more, visit Aviation InterTec Services.
