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According to regulations, aircraft must be in an airworthy condition before they can be operated. To ensure airworthiness, they must be maintained by an approved component maintenance organisation. This study is aimed to identify potential errors that may arise during the final inspection and certification process of aircraft components, categorise them, determine their consequences and quantify the associated risks. Any removed aircraft components must be sent to an approved aircraft component maintenance organisation for further maintenance and issuance of European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) Form 1. Thereafter, a final inspection and certification process must be conducted by certifying staff to receive an EASA Form 1. This process is crucial because any errors during this stage can result in the installation of unsafe components in an aircraft.

The Systematic Human Error Reduction and Prediction Approach (SHERPA) method was used to identify potential errors. This method involved a review of the procedures of three maintenance organisations, individual interviews with ten subject matter experts and a consensus group of 14 certifying staff from different maintenance organisations to achieve the desired results.

In this study, 39 potential errors were identified during the final inspection and certification process. Furthermore, analysis revealed that 48.7% of these issues were attributed to checking errors, making it the most common type of error observed.

This study pinpoints the potential errors in the final inspection and certification of aircraft components. It offers maintenance organisations a roadmap to assess procedures, implement preventive measures and reduce the likelihood of these errors.

General aviation aircraft has a wide range of applications, and effective cost management is one of the hot spots in the research of general aviation manufacturers. The purpose of this paper is to build a flexible engineering method to predict maintenance cost of general aviation aircraft.

To establish a reasonable general aviation aircraft maintenance cost prediction model, it is necessary to analyze the influencing factors and extract the main components of maintenance cost. The maintenance cost is divided by engineering method, and the estimation model of each component cost is established. Then, the general aviation aircraft maintenance cost model is obtained. The results show that the relative error of this method is between 13% and 20%, which has a good estimation accuracy and can be effectively used to estimate the maintenance cost of general aviation aircraft.

The maintenance cost plays an important role in the life cycle cost of general aviation aircraft. Accurate cost prediction method is of great significance to the optimal design of general aviation aircraft. However, there are few prediction models suitable for maintenance cost, the proposed approach is meaningful and quite desirable.

To some extent, this method overcomes the shortage of the work on maintenance cost prediction for general aviation aircraft. The model established in this paper has certain generality, which can provide some reference for general aviation aircraft design and operation enterprises.

In the past four decades, substantial air traffic growth has triggered enthusiasm in the aviation sector. At the same time, this growth has posed challenges to its financial and environmental sustainability commitments. A buzz has been centered on introducing and supporting aviation sustainability initiatives. These challenges have led to acknowledging the need to reduce aviation fuel consumption, a function of multiple factors. The different stakeholders having a diverse type of interplay govern the effective implementation of the factors at different decision levels (strategic, tactical and operational). Thus, the present study aims to critically examine various decision levels involved to understand opportunities and requirements related to aviation sustainability.

In this study, the best–worst method is used to quantify different decision levels’ role on various factors affecting aviation fuel consumption.

The results of this study signify that tactical-level decisions are most influential in reducing aviation fuel consumption with the highest impact (0.41) followed by operational-level decisions (0.30) and strategic-level decisions (0.29), respectively.

The results point toward the critical role of middle-level hierarchy, i.e. aircraft manufacturers, airlines and others in the aviation industry’s sustainable growth. Thus, middle-level stakeholders must be inspired and empowered to act, being at the center they link the other two levels.

This study has added to the body of knowledge by exploring the decision-making competencies needed by different aviation sector stakeholders. It also presents the possible options available in the sector and the role of stakeholders at different levels in exploiting and implementing the sustainable aviation sector changes.

During the 1920s, military interests in Latin America and international and diplomatic relations gave the impetus to the creation national airlines. In countries like Colombia and Brazil, the technological and commercial approaches of Germany and other Europeans nations influenced the forms airlines took. In the following decade the United States began to exert its influence which was consolidated after the Second World War. The pattern continued until the 1980s and involved strong international regulation, the predominance of publicly owned national airlines, and American technological leadership. Market liberalization then brought about a new scenario involving privatizations of national airlines across the region, intensified competition, and mergers and acquisitions that led to the formation of large carriers. Today, passenger traffic in the region is dominated by two carriers: LATAM and Avianca. Other local airlines remain, often linked to a global alliance member. Air traffic has been grown, with the prospect of further growth after economic recovery flowing the COVID-19 pandemic. Historically, commercial air traffic has adapted to the needs of its vast territory but where institutional changes have played a very important and often decisive role.

This study aims to present a diagnosis method to inspect the structure health for aging transport aircraft based on the postflight data in severe clear-air turbulence at transonic flight. The purpose of this method development is to assist certificate holder of aircraft maintenance factory as a complementary tool for the structural maintenance program to ensure that the transport aircraft fits airworthiness standards.

In this study, the numerical approach to analyze the characteristics of flight dynamic and static aeroelasticity for two four-jet transport aircraft will be presented. One of these two four-jet transport aircraft is an aging one. Another one is used to demonstrate the order of magnitude of the static aeroelastic behaviors. The nonlinear unsteady aerodynamic models are established through flight data mining and the fuzzy-logic modeling technique based on postflight data. The first and second derivatives of flight dynamic and static aeroelastic behaviors, respectively, are then estimated by using these aerodynamic models.

Although the highest dynamic pressure of aging aircraft is lower, the highest absolute value of static aeroelastic effects response to the wing of aging aircraft is about 3.05 times larger than normal one; the magnitude variations of angles of attack are similar for both aircrafts; the highest absolute value of the static aeroelastic effects response to the empennage of aging aircraft is about 29.67 times larger than normal one in severe clear-air turbulence. The stabilizer of aging aircraft has irregular deviations with obvious jackscrew assembly problems, as found in this study.

A lack of the measurement data of vertical wind speed sensor on board to verify the estimated values of damping term is one of the research limitations of this study. This research involved potential problem monitoring of structure health for transport aircraft in different weights, different sizes and different service years. In the future research, one can consider more structural integrity issues for other types of aircraft.

It can be realized from this study that the structure of aging transport aircraft may have potential safety threat. Therefore, when the airline managed aging transport aircraft, it ought to be conducted comprehensive and in-depth inspections to reduce such safety risks and establish a complete set of safety early warning measures to deal with the potential problem of aircraft aging.

It can be realized that the structure of aging transport aircraft has potential safety threat. The airline managed aging transport aircraft; it should conduct comprehensive and in-depth inspections to reduce safety risks and establish a complete set of safety early warning measures.

This method can be used to assist airlines to monitor aging transport aircraft as a complementary tool of structural maintenance program to improve aviation safety, operation and operational efficiency.

In this context, this study aims to obtain information about the noise levels emitted to the environment by modeling the noise map of Dalaman Airport and correlating these noise values according to the Environmental Noise Directive (END) and World Health Organization (WHO) limits.

Dalaman Airport Aeronautical Information Publication and 2022 flight data from the airport were analyzed. The noise levels exposed to schools and health institutions were determined using the Cnossos–Eu calculation method.

Maximum noise levels were obtained as L_den 92.29 dB(A), L_day 85.24 dB(A), L_evening 89.00 dB(A) and L_night 85.23 dB(A) according to the noise indicators. Limit values recommended by the END and WHO according to noise indicator types and measurement results were correlated and evaluated.

In the noise modeling of Dalaman Airport, there has previously been no evaluation of the noise limits recommended according to END or WHO in the literature.

The expected learning outcomes are to understand the complexities involved in the integration of two carriers with different business strategies and approaches, the merger of two brands with distinct personas and identities and the confluence of two different cultures; figure out the strategic options in front of the Tata Group and how it can deal with various macro- and micro-level business challenges, defy the financial hiccups and manoeuvre the operational complexities to accomplish mission Vihaan.AI; and develop a pragmatic approach to macro and micro business environmental scanning for making strategic business decisions.

In November 2022, Tata Group, the salt to software conglomerate, announced the merger of Air India (AI) and Vistara. This would lead to the formation of the full-service airline under the brand name “Air India”. The obvious reason behind this was the higher recognition, salience and recall of the brand AI as compared with Vistara in the global market. The Tata Group envisaged the brand AI to be a significant international aviation player with the heritage, persona and ethos of the brand Vistara in the renewed manifestation of AI. To realise these goals, Tata Group laid down an ambitious plan called “Vihaan.AI”, which was aimed at capturing a domestic market share of 30% by 2027.

This case study can be taught as part of undergraduate- and postgraduate-level management programmes.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.