Maintenance cost studies of present aircraft subsystems

Abstract

This report describes two detailed studies of actual maintenance costs for present transport aircraft. The first part describes maintenance costs for jet transport aircraft broken down into subsystem costs according to an ATA classification. From 90 airlines polled, only four were able to supply costs in this breakdown.- Despite the lack of data, multiple regression techniques were then used to demonstrate the construction of cost estimating formulae for both subsystems and a total aircraft system. The results indicate the possibility of improving present methods of estimating maintenance costs. The second part of this report briefly describes the results of an extremely detailed study of actual maintenance costs for the rotor and transmission systems of present commercial helicopters.. The background information concerning each item of maintenance cost was examined to determine if it would be avoidable in the context of a mature airline operation with a full scale modification program for vehicle deficiencies. Muh, The results show that if only "normal" maintenance on rotor and transmission systems were performed, the potential maintenance costs for present helicopters are roughly 1.3 times the standard ATA estimate for fixed wing aircraft.