The keynote speaker was Air Marshal Julian Young CB OBE, who during his presentation covered the RAF’s awareness of airworthiness and the challenges presented by Ageing Aircraft. He highlighted the RAF’s fleet composition and some of their examples of Ageing Aircraft such as the Tornado from 1980-2019, Puma 1973-2025 and the Boeing 707 which was originally supposed to last from 1964-2014, but has now been extended to 2042 in its Rivet Joint guise. Julian also discussed the RAF’s Ageing Aircraft Challenge Cycle from fault detection – repairs – maintenance – mission availability – funding - through to extending the life of the aircraft. He also covered some of the common issues that were being experienced.
There were a number of presentations including one from Adrian Parrish, Musketeer Solutions Ltd, who also discussed the downside of poorly maintained ageing aircraft with a number of examples e.g. Aloha, Swiss Air and the Nimrod aircraft disasters. He showed a number of interesting slides which illustrated the effects/causes of ageing.
Dr Steve Reed from DSTL, covered the ‘Threats and Mitigations to Ageing Military Aircraft’ including an overview of the DSTL’s Ageing Aircraft R&D programme and its objectives.
Jeff Jones and Mike McEwing, QinetiQ Ltd covered their company’s approach from ‘A Practitioner’s Perspective’ which highlighted some of the Ageing Aircraft Assessments they’d done on the Puma, Sea King, Gazelle and Lynx amongst others, together with an analysis of their finds and then onto Out of Service Data.
Andy Nelson from tlmNEXUS Ltd covered ‘New Techniques for Resolving Airworthiness Issues’ in his presentation including a purpose-built database his company had developed.
Simon Goodchild from Edif-ERA talked about ‘Managing the Hazards Associated with Ageing’ including some of the state of the art techniques.
Colin Woodward from Rolls-Royce gave a presentation on ‘Supporting an Ageing Engine Fleet’ highlighted the ageing issues faced by a successful civil engine product 20 years after its entry into service. Richard James from Musketeer Solutions gave a practical overview on ‘New Techniques for Managing Ageing Structures’.
The two final speakers were Kevin ‘Taff’ Stone, The Vulcan Operating Company, who highlighted ‘Some of the New Technologies used by the Vulcan Project’ including reverse engineering of the fuel tanks, updating flight instruments to comply with modern requirements, integrating analogue and digital communications and installing PFLARM.
Wg Cdr Mark Johnson from DE&S concluded the event with a presentation on the ‘VC-10 Case Study’; the aircraft was first introduced into service in the RAF in 1966. During the 1970-1990s many of the fleet converted from carrying passengers to tankers and the aircraft remained in service until 2013.
Some interesting questions that were raised during the seminar were:
- Issues and safety problems around the VC10
- How minor spares from SMEs in the supply chain were audited and how counterfeit spares are identified
- How materials can change characteristics over a period of time, especially wiring systems
- What are the cultural problems that contribute to maintenance issues – example giving of one person licking a pipe to determine if salt or cadmium corrosion was present in a corrosion issue?
- Haddon-Cave report cropped up a few times and how the RAF had dealt with the aftermath
- What’s the best way of Certifying Compliance and Regulations?
- Life of VC10 Axle Gear and Hydrogen Embrittlement
- Why does the MoD keep extending the life of an aircraft rather than replacing them?
- What configuration issues exist on civil aircraft that the RAF has picked up and adapted?
We also recorded a mini podcast with Kevin Stone and two podcasts with Dr Steve Reed after the event.