At the beginning of January, members of our Continuous Airworthiness Management Organisation (CAMO), Engineering and Planning teams travelled to Alabama on a fact finding and information sharing visit to the CAE Dothan Training Centre, who operate 6 Grob120TP-A aircraft – all of which have completed their 3000hr maintenance.
As we are preparing to reach this milestone, our team’s trip was of utmost importance; it would allow us to draw from CAE’s expertise and experience to ensure a smooth maintenance operation.
Upon arrival at CAE our team was greeted by the Director of Aircraft Maintenance, Joe Vercellone, and given a guided tour of the training facilities for the Grob120TP-A, King Air 200 and the build up for their new helicopter training programme. The tour continued in the maintenance hangar and the tool/ground support equipment (GSE) area, where they were shown the specialised GSE and tooling needed for the 3000hr maintenance, as well as how the tooling assisted the CAE engineers on completing certain tasks that were not listed in the aircraft manuals.
The tours were followed by conversations with CAE’s experienced engineers about the procedures followed during maintenance, the issues they encountered and the workarounds they followed to ensure a smooth maintenance process.
Of course the visit wouldn’t have been complete without a visit to the Army Aviation Museum at Fort Novosel (Formerly Fort Rucker); an excellent aviation museum that has aircraft from the Wright Brothers up to the present day on display, and the Army Aviation Hall of fame listing many outstanding Airman and Medal of Honour holders.
“It was a very worthwhile trip to the Peanut Capital of the World that highlighted the issues that we may encounter and the ways to overcome them on the 3000hr maintenance. Also seeing these first hand will make our first 3000hr go a lot smoother.” Gary, Planning Manager
*If you are interested in seeing how the CAE Dohan Training Centre looks like, you can take a virtual tour here.*
