Aviation Maintenance, METRON Aviation, Seating Arrangement - An Essay On Efficient Air Travel.

METRON Aviation and Its Role in Supporting FAA

A airline is a low cost carrier and operates a narrow bodied jet fleet in an Australian domestic network.
On a scheduled flight today, a controlled departure program (METRON) is operating at the departure port. On request to the tower for a departure clearance, the flight crew are advised to remain at their departure gate for another 20 minutes. The flight crew have each completed 10 hours of duty so far this day.
Prior to departure, the rear flight attendant seat (2 person, fold down) retract mechanism has been reported as faulty.

The aircraft MEL only requires that a flight attendant seat must be fitted and that the flight attendant restraint harnesses must be operational. Your Maintenance Control (MAINTROL) staff have advised contracted ground engineers to apply the MEL for the seat harness and record in the aircraft Technical Log. The Captain subsequently signs the Tech Log.
Following departure, an alert message appears to the flight crew indicating a fault with the First Officer’s Air Speed Indicator (ASI). There is no engineering coverage at the destination but the MEL indicates one ASI may be inoperative for operation.
About an hour into the flight, a male passenger (seated in one of the emergency exit rows) queries one of the flight attendants in broken English as to why the flight is taking so long as he expected the flight should have reached the destination. It transpires that he has accidentally boarded the wrong flight.
On arrival in the destination’s terminal area, ATC advise 10 minutes holding is required for traffic.
The destination airport has only one runway and aerodrome works are in progress. On landing, a longer taxi route is required due to the works, and there is other traffic present.
From a planned block time of 1.45, the actual block time is 2.25.
Due to the lost time, the Captain is keen to have a quick turnaround. The refueller commences fuelling shortly after the aircraft arrives on the bay.
The Captain requests the First Officer to complete the Load and Trim sheet while he completes the aircraft preflight exterior inspection. Passengers are boarding and the no smoking and fasten seat belt signs are illuminated as usual. During his inspection, the Captain notices that the refueller has just finished fuelling. The Captain signs and retains a copy of the fuel docket.
Meanwhile, the contract ground handler is loading baggage and freight. Two barrows of freight are to be loaded into the forward hold. While most packages appear to have labelling, the senior loader can’t seem to locate the summary list of the freight items. Also, two of the packages appear to have been damaged.
While baggage is being loaded in the rear hold, 5 additional bags are also presented to loaders as being too big to fit in the aircraft cabin.

Discuss the regulatory and operational aspects of the above scenario.

Transportation through aircraft is said to be the fastest mode of transportation and it is suitable for carrying heavy goods to a longer distance in a shorter period of time. This provides efficiency at a higher rate, contented and quick transport service. In the particular scenario, there are an increased number of airlines including the private sector which arises to the need for the aviation maintenance. In fact, the Low cost carrier model of commercial aviation had provided gateway for the third party independent maintenance, repair and overhaul services (MRO). Lower the cost of maintenance which is to be done in-house. Where else, other heavy maintenance should be done only to the Independent MROs. The need of maintenance could increase when the aircraft gets older, just providing jobs for many entrepreneurs in their maintenance business. The opposition among the airlines and charter workers has required these workers to deem the cost critical measures. Airline maintenance, being the most challenging one, local MROs must be required to save the aircraft ferrying, crew and fuel costs. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) is an operationally independent multi-modal Bureau within the Commonwealth Department of Transport and Regional Services. According to them the term “Fuel starvation” means the interruption of the fuel consumption by the aircraft engine although the fuel exists. Current studies has evaluated the majority of accidents had happened during the fuel starvation and several measures have been taken into consideration, in order to avoid the starvation. This paper discusses regarding METRON Aviation, an improvement sector of NextGen that is devoted to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). We have also discussed the seating arrangement in the airplane and the maintenance that is to be carried out during the emergency situation. Sufficient information has been provided here to save the fuel in the refueller. The information provided in this paper consists of the maintenance strategy that is carried out according to the Australian regulation.

METRON Aviation is dedicated to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which is said to be an improvement of NextGen (Castro, 2008). METRON aviation has supported Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), since 1990s. Mostly METRON support FAA for its development of initiation in the air traffic management and their flow control. The Aviation team of METRON promotes a deep capacity regarding the aviation management and Subject Matter Experts (SME) that helps in possible implementation of the upcoming technologies and provide support for the operation of the airline for the short-term and long-term capabilities (Castro and Oliveira, 2010). As a management team member of Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) at the METRON Aviation, they should be able to understand the necessity of the involvement of the shareholders in mission analysis and research. With the continuation of their research and mission analysis history with the FAA, METRON Aviation is a sturdy supporter of the NextGen enterprises (Kohl, Larsen, Larsen, Ross and Tiourine, 2007). The activities of the organization are as follows:

• Designing En route efficiency
• Improvement of the efficiency, increment in the capability and enhancement in the predictability
• Preparing terminal airspaces for the growth of the company
• Enhancement in the surface operation

Seating Arrangement

METRON aviation has prepared to poise the existing en route technology for the improvement of NextGen. The key member for the FAA’s Time Based Flow Management program should provide a full contribution towards (Clausen, Larsen, Larsen and Rezanova, 2010) the enhancement of metering of the aircraft through the NAS. This results in the maximum prediction of the en route tributary. Through the Mini Global team, METRON helps FAA in demonstrating the appositeness of global exchange models for Flight, Aeronautical and Weather information. METRON has been working with the FAA administration for the Improvement of the efficiency, increment in the capability and enhancement in the predictability. The sufficient balance between the airplane and airports should be maintained with the available resources and this is done through the managing air traffic flow. Decision support tools at the Cutting-edge technologies, let the traffic managers to take the corrective action at the advance stage before the development of the potential air traffic problems (Grosche, 2009). This preventive action leads to the increase in the efficiency and capability of the aviation management system.

A proper flight operation with the effective needs of the service providers leads to the development of ATFM. The operators of the aviation need to be very efficient to handle the business case even when they meet any weather or adverse events interrupt agenda. They need conspicuousness, obviousness as well as management. With the help of the toolset provided by this particular aviation, the traffic managers are responsible for the routing directives and the departure control to solve the needs of the aviation (Cordes, 2007) by rescheduling their plan with the available resources.

Seating Arrangement:

Problem Description:

The fault situation has been analyzed in the 2 person fold down attendance seat that is in the rear position. This situation is found before the departure of the aircraft, and the MEL needs the seat to be fitted without any hold back, which should be set under operation. The staff in charge of the Maintenance Control (MAINTROL), has provided sufficient information regarding the fitting of MEL to the ground engineers that should be necessarily recorded in the Technical Log of the airplane.

Advisory Circular (AC) that provides certain norms regarding the seating arrangement in airplane, certain terms of seating arrangement is mentioned by them. “Near” which means possibly close to the exit way that allows the flight attendants to arrive at the obligatory floor level emergency exits in a timely manner to implement their emergency migration duties. A longitudinal distance measured before or after each seat to its associated exit equal to not more than three rows of seats is adequate (Hawkins, 2011). If the standard flight attendant seats are inaugurated within a three-row longitudinal distance at more than a location from the sufficient emergency exit floor level, and the working regulations necessitate the position of a airplane attendants in the surrounding area of a particular exit, the particular flight attendants must be placed in the seats near to the particular exit location, except the design of the seats auxiliary from the exit has greater than the previous inhabitant protection features over the seats near to the exit.

AOCC Organization

The term "direct view" means a direct line of sight from the cabinet area that facilitate the attendant of the flight to be aware of the passengers needs regarding any safety requirements regarding the torso restraint, which means the safety belt and shoulder harness secure. Respective of the "direct view", (Thatcher, 2010) which is responsible for the individual flight attendant, the extend view means to the degree feasible without bargaining proximity to the sufficient level of the floor exit area. According to the AC circular, “Means to secure” generally states the requirement, which is meant to be provided when the torso restraint (shoulder harness and safety belt) does not function. This safety system includes an automatic retractor, a pocket near the seat, and a design that allows the straps that is kept away by a folding seat (MEL). In any Scenario, when the torso restrain safety is unrestricted immediately, then it must not obstruct fast outlet throughout an emergency situation.

Required floor level emergency exit denotes the method and place of exit that are worn to begin the standard seating configuration for type qualification of aviation. A torso restraint system was designed initially in order to save a person from a maximum injury (Pearce, 2011). This could consist of strap, webbing, or similar device that promotes security to an individual. A pelvic restraint is sufficiently designed to stop the movement of the pelvis during emergency situation. This is also a part of torso restraint system. The upper portion of the torso restrain portion consists of support mechanism for the movement of the shoulder and the chest movement, which is referred as a shoulder harness. This mechanism is implemented with the double strap in such a way that gives each strap support for each shoulder.

The target of the AOCC is to regularly watch the activity of the aviation system activity and its timing that has been already predefined. Any problem in these cases such as aviation malfunction, unexpected events such as change in the climate or weather will stop the flight activity from taking place (Piera, 2012). The problem could also occur due to the crew members and flight attainders.  For these cases, the AOCC functions as a human decision system authority, which consist of the group of several experts who could handle the situation perfectly. These teams of experts are supervised with the system Operational Control Manager. The main goal of the operational control manager is to give a maximum facility to the aviation with the minimum cost.  According to the Australian standard, AOCC organization has three main goals to be achieved:

Decision Center

Decision Centre:  The controllers of the aircraft share equal physical space, while other supporting functions such as crew controllers, maintenance services, etc.  share different physical body (Raffel and Ramsay, 2011). Although several compartments are allocated, the collective organization should work for the same target.

Integrated Centre: At this center, each and every responsibility is shared in the similar physical space as well as they are hierarchically reliant on a supervisor. There is a simple hierarchy organization for every small company where as the larger company has the multi-dimensional hierarchy organization. This center of AOCC organization is shown in the figure given below

 Figure 1: Integrated center of airline operational management

Hub Control Centre: Although, the majority of the roles are bodily separated at the aviation industry, there is a hub which is operated with the airline companies (Rhoades, 2011). For instance, when the aircraft controller stays bodily outside the hub, then there is a center called the Decision center that operates with the hub. In case, when both the aircraft and the crew controller are outside the hub then there is an organization called the Integrated center, which is inside the hub. This system is said to be the most advantageous one that provides the customer service, catering, cleaning, passengers transfer, etc. within the airline management that is bodily near to the procedure.

As stated in the above figure that explains the function of a commercial Integrated Operational Control Centre. The AOCC is the composition of the integration of several employees, who have their own priority and responsibility (Smout, 2011). Those activities carried out by those workers should be informed to the supervisor who is the superior officer of the two-level hierarchical system. The timing of the operation is also shown in the above figure that starts 72 to 24 hours prior to the day of operation and ends after 12 to 24 hours. The main roles carried out by AOCC are as follows:

Flight Dispatch: This is primarily responsible for the proper function of the Air Traffic Control (ATC) that organizes several plans for the flight and desires new air travel slots to the control body (MAINTROL in Australia).

Aircraft Control: This is the center of the airline operational control which is responsible for managing the resource aircraft.

Crew Control: This controls and manages the crew members. The control team checks the crew member’s check-in and checkout timings and updates the data schedule according to the updated interruptions.

Integrated Center

Maintenance Services: They are accountable for certain unplanned schedules that take place at a shorter duration. The changes that is made in the rotation of the aircraft is said to be the shorter maintenance that is carried out in each and every stations.

Passenger Services: Any decisions that are carried out by AOCC could affect the regular case of the passengers. Hence, the primary responsibility of the passengers services is to take care of the passengers to get affected with the lesser impact with the changes made. This role is typically played at the airports and in the bigger companies this is carried out by HCC organization.

Problem description:

During the inspection, the Captain of the airline management system records the refueller. He finds the refueller has stopped its operation. It is necessary to replace it with the fuel docket.

System requirements:

The most commonly containments that could be found in the aviation fuel may be solid particles, micro-organisms, any sort of containment etc. this could include the mixing up of the different grades of the fuel. Care must be taken while fueling, even though we couldn’t be able to avoid some sort of human containment (David, 2008). The individual who is responsible for the fueling operations should necessarily take care of the design of the fuel system and operation of the aviation. The different containment of the fuel includes the following:

1) Solids: These solid containments are normally insoluble in the fuels. They could be in the form of dirt, dust, metal particles, sand, iron rust etc. Moreover, metal particles, dust, lint from filter material and rags, gasket pieces, and even sludge that are generated by the bacterial activity can also be included. Each and every individual aircraft could bear these types of solid substances and that depends on the tolerable level of the aircraft engine.

Control measures:

The possible way to control this type of containments to be included in fuel is by the process of elimination, or limiting the substances to be included into the fuel. Internal coating or at least introduction of an aluminum coating between the filter and the loading point should be done. Alloys that contain cadmium, copper or galvanized zinc are not used for this purpose. The containers should be tightly closed with the help of the covers or caps. During the fueling operations care must be taken to prevent the lint from wiping rags or airborne contaminants inflowing through the fuel system.

Hub Control Center

The solid particles could also be removed from the fuel tank through the process of filtering or separating. In order to make the filter function efficiently, the filter with the nozzle point should be checked regularly.

2) Water: Water could enter the fuel tank in two forms: i) Dissolved water that occurs to the fuel tank due to the humidity. ii) Free water that occurs in a bulk amount to the fuel tank due to the agitation of water into the fuel (Randles, Alice, 2009). These are in large quantities and could cause floating of water in a cloudy particle. Sometimes, due to the change in the temperature the dissolved water could result as free water since water gets introduced into a fuel tank in the term of one part per million per degree Fahrenheit (1 ppm/deg F).

Control measures:

Aircraft can allow water of about 30 ppm at a maximum. Most of the aircraft has some filter heating devices that could sufficiently deal with the water in a sufficient amount. Many oil companies and equipment supply houses have the devices to measure the quantity of water suspended in the fuel tanks.

2) Surfactants: A soap or detergent like substances is introduced inside the fuel tank that produces sulfonates. This could occur during the process of refining, certain additives, washing off process in the distribution systems. These Surfactants are readily soluble in water which could readily dissolve in the water forming a substance to tend to remain in the filters. Surfactants alone will not harm the fuel. But the combination of surfactant with the water could produce a greater level of contamination.

Control measures:

No particular level is declared as a threat and no control measures have been taken. However, the "white bucket" test or visual test using a clear glass jar is used which helps in the detection of the concentrations of surfactants in aviation gasoline and turbine fuel. All we need is a dirt free white porcelain bucket or a glass jar and water that is contact with the fuel bottom of the tank, filter or other contact where surfactants are expected to build up. When there is a presence of surfactants then those particles will be settles as a brown residue.

Runway:

This is a pathway used for the landing and takeoff operation which is in the form of cemented long and narrow rectangle strip. This pathway is covered with the grasses on the both the sides of the pathway. Runway which is located in the center of the landing strip is said to be the width of the runway and the area of the shoulders. The runway is smaller when compared to the length of the landing strip (Odoni, 2009). This is due to the reason that the stop way could be accommodated in case of the derelict takeoff. The space of the runway should be sufficient for the landing and takeoff of the airplane. This should be constructed in such a way that the length and width should fit into the landing operations of the airplane. There should be enough area when the aircraft starts to accelerate while taking off from the land. Certain meteorological and topological condition decides the length of the runway. Transverse gradient should always stay greater than 0.5%

Taxiways:

This is said to be a paved way that connects runway by loading apron with the maintenance and services or by other runway. This could be used in air by the airplane for purposes like exit or landing etc. at taxiway the speed of the aircraft is comparatively low than landing or taking off process. The runway and taxiway intersection should be paid attention since this point forms as a place for the intense loading. When a taxiway is said to be weaker then there is a risk of the airplane to fall down from the taxiway. The longitudinal grade should be greater than 3 per cent whereas the transverse way should be greater than 0.5 per cent. This should be visible to the pilot at the distance from 300 meters and 3 meter from the earth level. Recently opened Perth taxiway is named as Charlie that is located at east direction, which is parallel to the runway 03/21. This runway additionally combines with the runway 03 at the southern part through the new Charlie taxiway 11. The previous taxiway leads to the extension of time from the flight takeoff and landing and there occurs some sort of safety issue the airplane has to cross the actively operated runway. Due to this new taxiway the time duration has been reduced and the safety has also been increased.

Problem Description:

There is some sort of baggage loading problem in the aircraft. Most of the baggages are labeled; the senior loader has a problem in listing the items as well as he found some packages in a damaged condition. The loader at the rear hold is loaded with the extra 5 bags.

System Requirement:

Several lifting equipments could be used for this purpose that provides the safe handling of the luggage. The Bag Lift solves the problem of gate checked baggage handling (Morrell, 2011). At concourse level, bags are placed into a cart built into the walls of a PBB walkway. The gate agent closes the door and sends the cart to the ramp, where workers wheel it to the aircraft for loading. The conveyor baggage transport system is used to load and unload luggage from aircraft, promoting safety for ground personnel using less persons, and it's faster thus saving time and money. The NOVA Baggage Lift is a bridge-mounted vertical conveyor for moving heavy loads up to 500 pounds to and from the passenger boarding bridge.

Conclusion:

At the year of 1991, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) announces a law regarding an aviation which should consist of 45 minute of the fixed fuel reserves for Visual Flight Rules (VFR) operation. This also adds 15% reserve for Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) operations. After this safety regulation, a captain or the pilot of the particular aviation is responsible for ensuring whether the airplane carries the necessary fuel to facilitate the planned flight to be undertaken in safe situation. Several baggage lift system have been proposed in this paper to deal with the problem of the luggage issues. 

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