Aviation Week & Space Technology - 3 November 2014

tomers. As AFI-KLM usually charges

a flight-hour rate to its external airline

customers, the MRO bears NFF costs

and so has an intense interest in reduc-

ing the NFF rate. It obtains data from

external customers and talks to their

managers when investigating NFFs.

Modern IT systems help a lot with

data, but investigation of root causes

requires man-hours of work, much of

it by highly skilled and well-paid en-

gineers. Thorough investigations also

require help from avionics OEMs, and

Vingerhoed says most cooperate fully.

Especially at annual aviation mainte-

nance conferences, techs and engi-

neers exchange information and look

at common problems. Nevertheless,

“not every OEM is as cooperative as

it could be,” Vingerhoed says. “I want

open books from OEMs.”

AFI-KLM E&M obtains avionics

testing software from OEMs and usu-

ally uses this software. But where OEM

software is unavailable or too slow, the

MRO may develop its own. For example,

some OEM software requires 48 hr. for

a thorough component test. The MRO

wants to test as fast as possible, so it

developed software that needs only six

hours to validate results. “It’s in our in-

terest to make testing as fast and cheap

as possible,” Vingerhoed stresses.

For almost all NFFs, the MRO ana-

lyzes data and looks for root causes us-

ing simple methods. But some avionics

components show up as NFFs three

or more times in 18 months. This one

percent of NFFs prompts much more

labor-intensive investigations.

Here the MRO will look at the sta-

tion, the pilots, cabin crew, logistics,

the whole chain of responsibility and

possible influence. It first takes a high-

level look and, if that does not yield

conclusions, goes a step deeper and

finally—if necessary—a further step.

This last step may look at crews and

staf at each station. “Normally, we do

not go that far,” Vingerhoed says. The

full, three-step investigations are done

one to three times per year.

Root causes fall into three main cat-

egories: 60% originate in the compo-

nent itself, 30% in the aircraft and 10%

in AFI-KLM E&M’s own shops.

Vingerhoed hopes that new-genera-

tion aircraft will reduce the NFF rate,

as their avionics components have

more self-testing software built in. But

KLM does not fly the 787 yet, and its

only customer operating the 787 has

been doing so for only a year and nine

months, so there is not enough data to

know if that hope has been realized. c

MRO Edition

MRO26 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY MRO EDITION NOVEMBER 3/10, 2014 AviationWeek.com/mro

AVIONICS

Arinc 672, “Guidelines for the

Reduction of NFF,” lays out the No

Fault Found problem in concep-

tual terms, but tracking them still

requires extremely detailed steps.

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