Ukrainian MRO company MAUtechnic, Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) and Luftronix, Inc have jointly conducted drone-based scans of UIA’s Boeing 737-800 aircraft in Kyiv. All scans were conducted using Luftronix’s custom-built drones with high-precision navigation systems and high-quality scanning equipment, and the Luftronix Orchestrator software for scan planning, flight operations and data analysis.
“Our focus is always on
the quality of our maintenance, safety of passengers and flawless operation of
all aircraft systems,” says Volodymyr Polishchuk,
Quality Assurance Manager at MAUtechnic. He added, “it was encouraging to
see the Luftronix team sharing the same values and perspectives.”
The scans guarantee a
consistent surface resolution and the equipment automatically measures the
distance from the surface and curvature of the object to allow for precise
on-screen measurements of any artifact. This allows inspectors to assess
immediately whether the artifacts are within specifications prescribed in the
aircraft maintenance and structural repair manuals. In addition, scans are
archived for comparisons over time enabling a monitoring practice for any
artifact that requires repeated attention.
Luftronix’s drones carry
multiple fall-back systems to ensure no single equipment failure can create a
fatal in-flight incident. Any critical instrument has built-in redundancies. In
addition, the autonomously operating drones have built-in emergency operations
for known safety-relevant scenarios and can recover from unexpected events, for
example foreign objects moving into the flight path, ladders or ropes appearing
where they were not expected, or even other drones interfering.
“After years of working
day and night to ensure safety and precision of our scanning equipment, we see
our cooperation with MAUtechnic and UIA as a major milestone in introducing our
technology to the aviation industry,” says Klaus
Sonnenleiter, President and CEO at Luftronix, and continued, “we
see this as a chance to preserve the result of each inspection, make them
comparable and have inspections conducted much faster and much more
efficiently than it was possible in the past.”
MAUtechnic is hoping to reduce
the turnaround time for a typical aircraft structure inspection by up to 50%,
depending on the type of inspection, and to also utilize the technology in
heavy maintenance for various verification use cases. The joint project will
continue to repeatedly scan aircraft and find the most efficient path to
inspecting aircraft even faster and more reliably.
– eTurboNews | Trends | Travel News Online
