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The A350 XWB is designed to have no scheduled maintenance below 10 days, apart from some visual checks at transit or daily check. The target is to have a first interval check at 48 hours for visual inspection of wheels, tyres and brakes that can be easily and quickly performed. The next group of tasks concerns the oil monitoring level. These tasks can be performed with just one man in about one hour, including access time. (The A350 will have the capability to monitor, to some extent, the hydraulics liquid and rotable components through the OMS and its associated pages.)
A checks and base maintenance
The target interval is at 1,200 FH; this can be compared to a current A check (today typically at 800 FH for the A330), with a more flexible check content based on operator utilisation.
There will be multiple such tasks at 2,400 and 3,600 FH which will include some Variable Frequency Generator (VFG, ATA 24) oil filters and some light operational check which can be easily performed onboard the aircraft through the OMS. All this will reduce the grounding time, because these tasks can be easily performed overnight.
frmrCapCadet wrote:Starlionblue - what is involved with preliminary versus/and final fuel figure, obviously more complicated than my Prius.
Starlionblue wrote:frmrCapCadet wrote:Starlionblue - what is involved with preliminary versus/and final fuel figure, obviously more complicated than my Prius.
The reason for the two step process is because if the fueler had to wait for the final figure before starting to pump there would not be enough time to get the fuel on board. So you give the fueler a "standby fuel" figure based on the flight plan, then fine tune once you have the final weight.
77west wrote:
There is also the situation that you end up with too much fuel, and have to offload fuel "defuel" which I believe is not a process that encourages happy thoughts...
Starlionblue wrote:77west wrote:
There is also the situation that you end up with too much fuel, and have to offload fuel "defuel" which I believe is not a process that encourages happy thoughts...
I imagine a defueling event would result in tea and biscuits with the chief pilot. It is really, really something you want to avoid.
Just to clarify, what you are talking about is not a technical stop. A technical stop would be one where there would be just aircraft servicing such as a fuel stop. What you talking about would be a flight termination. Where the aircraft is cleaned, re-catered, fueled, the lavs are dumped, cargo/bags are off loaded and maintenance items are completed for a turn around/thru flight.
Airlines don't make money with aircraft on the ground. It is not uncommon to see a 3 hour turn at the home hub of an airline. Although, 1+30 is adequate to service a wide-body. A lot depends on slots and other factors but 1.5-3 hours is very reasonable.
Your 50% of the flight time is way too long. As I said, utilization is the key to making money.
Actually 3 hours are rather long. Regardless of flight duration, deplaning, cleaning, basic technical checks, refueling and loading need a certain time depending on the local infrastructure and the aircraft type. A typical narrowbody can do all that in less than 25 minutes. Widebodies on long-haul missions usually need about 1 hour because everything is larger and especially refueling takes somewhat longer.
Yan104 wrote:
I think you exaggerate a little while estimating that one hour of stopover is sufficient for a widebody including all the operations on the ground !! ... The graph of TRT that you had the kindness to share with us for the A380 mentions a minimum time of turnaround of 90mn if the gangways of embarkation of the lower and upper decks are used simultaneously for boarding passengers (I know because a friend in another french forum presented it to me) ... And I also wondered whether for long-haul bi-reactors the time of cleaning of the cabin passenger and re-supply of kerosene are the same for example for B777-200 / 300 or A330-200 / 300 ? Do stewards / hostesses not train during their first train or refresher courses under different scenarios of cleaning a passenger cabin, to refine their treatment procedures in a way that increases speed and efficiency, from the cleanest with passengers endowed with a high sense of good citizenship, to the dirtiest with rather unruly passengers, and do the companies not re-define the standard TRT charts proposed by the manufacturers according to the reality of the ground? Does the cultural factor not play on the cleanliness of passenger cabins according to the lines and regions of the world served?! ...
Concerning the fuelling I also know that now in some airports the kerosene feeding of airplanes is done by an underground network of pipelines leading to the locations of airplanes: the fuel is then pumped from the ground and directly injected into the tanks of the planes, without needing a tanker truck . How long does it take a full tank of gas to run a bi-reactor? Does it depend on aircraft types and sub-types (B777-200 / 300, A330-200 / 300 etc)?
I have also heard that to reduce the time in fueling, low-cost make full of tanks to ensure at least a round-trip on certain lines whose range of action is less than the maximum flight time for narrowbodies aircrafts(B737/A320) (Which seems to me to be more or less at 5h autonomy): is it true? If so, is it not a hazardous approach in relation to the traffic on the ground and engorgement near the runways? Does it not extend the take-off distance especially with a plane filled to the max, whistling at great pace tanks as the reactors are at their maximum during this phase?
I'll stop here for today.
Starlionblue wrote:As mentioned above says, 3 hours is long. For a longhaul widebody, 80-90 minutes is plenty. Certainly in many cases it is longer due to the nature of the timetable, but we don't need 3 hours.
Here's a very rough example timeline of a turn. Can be shorter or longer.
- Minute 0. Block on.
- Minute 1. Door(s) open.
- Minute 20. All pax off.
- Minute 25. Cleaners/catering on board to clean and prep for next sector. Inbound crew off.
- Minute 35. Outbound crew on.
- Minute 45. Preliminary fuel figure ready. Fueling starts.
- Minute 50. Cargo loading starts. Cleaners off.
- Minute 55. Boarding starts. Engineer signs off the aircraft.
- Minute 60. Final fuel figure ready.
- Minute 65. Fueling completed.
- Minute 80. Cargo and pax loading ends. Turnaround coordinator confirms the final pax number and closes the cockpit door.
- Minute 82. Door(s) closes.
- Minute 85. Pushback.
strfyr51 wrote:Starlionblue wrote:As mentioned above says, 3 hours is long. For a longhaul widebody, 80-90 minutes is plenty. Certainly in many cases it is longer due to the nature of the timetable, but we don't need 3 hours.
Here's a very rough example timeline of a turn. Can be shorter or longer.
- Minute 0. Block on.
- Minute 1. Door(s) open.
- Minute 20. All pax off.
- Minute 25. Cleaners/catering on board to clean and prep for next sector. Inbound crew off.
- Minute 35. Outbound crew on.
- Minute 45. Preliminary fuel figure ready. Fueling starts.
- Minute 50. Cargo loading starts. Cleaners off.
- Minute 55. Boarding starts. Engineer signs off the aircraft.
- Minute 60. Final fuel figure ready.
- Minute 65. Fueling completed.
- Minute 80. Cargo and pax loading ends. Turnaround coordinator confirms the final pax number and closes the cockpit door.
- Minute 82. Door(s) closes.
- Minute 85. Pushback.
just exactly WHAT airplane are you talking about and just HOW much fuel are you loading?? Because 20 minutes might be fine for a narrowbody but for a
B777 or a B747 20 minutes isn't enough even with 2 trucks for a full load.
Budgie099 wrote:When aircraft are on the ground for much longer than the minimum necessary, are they normally towed away to some kind of remote stand for the wait, or is it common for aircraft to sit at a terminal gate for hours and hours? I'm sure it must depend on how well-utilised the gates at this airport are, but what is the norm?
I know QF moves their A380s to a remote stand at LHR frequently/regularly. Is moving aircraft from the gate more common for visiting airlines, when compared to lets say BA or VS in Heathrow, KLM in Amsterdam, etc?
Dalmd88 wrote:Yan,
I loved your comment about not keeping the reactors running. I'm sure it is a translation thing.
Francoflier wrote:Dalmd88 wrote:Yan,
I loved your comment about not keeping the reactors running. I'm sure it is a translation thing.
It is. Colloquial French for jet engine is 'reacteur' which translates literally to reactor...
It is called a reactor because it is one, technically, in which fuel and air are mixed and react chemically.
The technical name stuck in the common language and is now commonly applied to jet engines, in the same way the same term stuck in the english language, except that it refers to the nuclear kind...
Sorry about the OT semantics lecture.
Budgie099 wrote:When aircraft are on the ground for much longer than the minimum necessary, are they normally towed away to some kind of remote stand for the wait, or is it common for aircraft to sit at a terminal gate for hours and hours? I'm sure it must depend on how well-utilised the gates at this airport are, but what is the norm?
I know QF moves their A380s to a remote stand at LHR frequently/regularly. Is moving aircraft from the gate more common for visiting airlines, when compared to lets say BA or VS in Heathrow, KLM in Amsterdam, etc?
Starlionblue wrote:Answering some of that:
- Flight attendants don't clean the plane. They do securing checks after a sector and security checks before a sector.
- I can't remember the figure off-hand but filling up a widebody is a question of maybe 30 minutes. However I've so far never seen full tanks. Filling up completely is a rare phenomenon. Again, typically not a limiting factor.
Starlionblue wrote:- Even with underground pipelines for fuel, you need a fuel truck to actually pump the fuel. The process is transparent to us pilots. We don't care if it comes from a bowser or from a pumping truck.
Starlionblue wrote:As mentioned above says, 3 hours is long. For a longhaul widebody, 80-90 minutes is plenty. Certainly in many cases it is longer due to the nature of the timetable, but we don't need 3 hours.
Here's a very rough example timeline of a turn. Can be shorter or longer.
- Minute 0. Block on.
- Minute 1. Door(s) open.
- Minute 20. All pax off.
- Minute 25. Cleaners/catering on board to clean and prep for next sector. Inbound crew off.
- Minute 35. Outbound crew on.
- Minute 45. Preliminary fuel figure ready. Fueling starts.
- Minute 50. Cargo loading starts. Cleaners off.
- Minute 55. Boarding starts. Engineer signs off the aircraft.
- Minute 60. Final fuel figure ready.
- Minute 65. Fueling completed.
- Minute 80. Cargo and pax loading ends. Turnaround coordinator confirms the final pax number and closes the cockpit door.
- Minute 82. Door(s) closes.
- Minute 85. Pushback.