Reducing Delays Caused by Unscheduled Maintenance and Cabin Reconfiguration

Abstract

With respect to future trends in cabin design, this paper takes a close look at two problem areas that produce delays and reduce the time an aircraft is in the air. The first is related to unscheduled maintenance and the second is related to necessary cabin reconfigurations. Each of the two problem areas are analysed for time consumption and costs. The research project PAHMIR (Preventive Aircraft Health Monitoring for Integrated Reconfiguration, a cooperation project between Airbus Germany and Hamburg University of Applied Sciences) ads “intelligence” to aircraft components and novel technologies to the aircraft system. These measures will be able to reduce time consumption and costs for unscheduled maintenance caused by the air conditioning system in the order of 8 %. These measures will be able to reduce time consumption for cabin reconfiguration by a bout 36 %. The upper price limit for economic intelligent quick fasteners seems to be around 500 US$.