American Airlines’ maintenance team is scrambling to complete safety changes to its fleet of Boeing 737 MAX jets ahead of a phased return to service, while deliveries of new jets are set to begin as early as this week.
TULSA, Oklahoma: American Airlines’ maintenance group is scrambling to complete safety adjustments to its fleet of Boeing 737 MAX jets ahead of a phased return to service, whereas deliveries of recent jets are set to begin as early as this week.
American’s maintenance base, the biggest on the planet, has housed its 24 MAX planes throughout a 20-month safety ban that adopted the second of two deadly crashes for the plane in March 2019, forcing some 400 MAX jets in service to be grounded.
It has dealt with some sudden duties whereas caring for the idled jets, together with evicting wildlife and custom-making tarps.
“Birds prefer to nest in issues. Combating that has been moderately interesting,” stated Erik Olund, managing director of base maintenance in Tulsa, Oklahoma, under the wing of a 737 MAX.
Following a Nov. 18 order from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) detailing vital changes for the jet to fly once more, 260 American Airlines’ specialists divided into three shifts are working around the clock, seven days every week to roll out two jets each seven to 10 days.
However because the plane returns throughout a pandemic that has crushed air travel demand and left questions over prospects’ willingness to fly, American is planning a phased re-introduction to its commercial schedule.
“We don’t wish to carry them out so quickly that we’re not flying them (…) and need to put them again into storage,” stated American’s chief working officer David Seymour on the hangar, the place the corporate hosted media on Wednesday.
American is launching commercial service on Dec. 29 with an everyday flight between Miami and New York Metropolis and can step by step reintroduce the jets as its 2,600 737 pilots cycle by a 2-1\/2 hour-simulator coaching.
It plans to take a supply of eight new 737 MAX jets from Boeing this month that may have already got the FAA-mandated system upgrades, Seymour stated. The primary supply may occur this week, and a few of these new jets might fly earlier than the upkeep crew works by all 24 in Tulsa.
Boeing has a backlog of 450 jets parked at its personal facilities that is constructed in the course of the grounding when MAX deliveries have been frozen.
“There’s rather a lot at stake right here and no person goes to hurry this airplane earlier than it’s operationally prepared or protected,” Olund stated.
Every aircraft will take an operational readiness flight and obtain FAA sign-off earlier than flying passengers.
One of many early issues American’s group encountered when the jets have been grounded was discovering sufficient tarps to cowl the engines. So the group made the covers themselves within the floorboard store, utilizing foam and corrugated plastic sheets.
Then, each 10 days mechanics would take away all the covers, run the engines, cycle the flaps, and rotate the tires. In addition, they moved wiring bundles after a regulatory mandate in March and performed a full sweep of the gasoline tanks to make sure no international objects.
All mentioned they spent 64,000 hours maintaining the jets in the form in the course of the longest grounding in commercial aviation historical past.
