Is maintenance an easy job? The typical engine has five modules and thirty thousand parts. It comes into an MTU shop every five to seven years and stays on average for 58 days. The engine is worked on for more than 3,000 man hours. But, there’s just one problem: the typical engine doesn’t exist.
Each engine is flown in a different manner, in a different environment and by a different operator. So of course it has individual needs. It is about serving those needs in the best possible way and without any waste. For instance, in Asia, we see a lot of air pollution affecting the engines, as well as areas with high altitude, dust, humidity, and heavy rains. All of these factors increase wear and cost.
Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul
For operators of newer engines, it makes sense to look at increasing on-wing times as a way of reducing cost. This can be achieved through services such as optimized fleet management—to ensure the optimal and most cost-effective removal time—customized work scoping, alternative repairs, and engine trend monitoring.
When it comes to older engines, the focus is on reducing cost for the remaining service life of the engine. Sometimes that is a customer saying ‘I need 7,000 more cycles, can you build me an engine to fly that, or provide an exchange engine that suits my operational require-ments,’ and other times it is us saying to the customer, ‘a full overhaul is unnecessary cost due to your short operational requirements, how about a lease engine.’ Of course, this can be applied to entire fleets too.