Civil aircraft maintenance and support Fault diagnosis from a business perspective

Aircraft maintenance down times together with maintenance activity durations and associated man‐hour expenditure are extremely important factors contributing to two major yardsticks of airline and civil aircraft performance: despatch reliability and direct maintenance costs, and have important cost implications. In maintaining an aircraft there is a need to predict fault diagnosis activities in quantitative terms of time. Traditionally estimating maintenance, in particular fault diagnosis, in terms of time has received scant attention. This paper identifies the need to evaluate all maintenance activity times. In addition, an approach is offered to estimate fault diagnosis activity times using knowledge‐based systems. Finally, the paper offers a vision outline in applying the technology and techniques to provide cost‐effective and timely fault diagnosis.