Top Reasons for Using Drones for Aircraft Maintenance

Aircraft maintenance is an important procedure, ensuring that such vehicles are well-looked over for any potential issues that may detract from performance, airworthiness, and general safety. As some aircraft may be large and complex, the maintenance procedure has become more robust. With increases in technology, devices such as drones have been introduced to the maintenance procedure, allowing for various increases in efficiency. In this blog, we will discuss the introduction of drone surveillance systems, allowing you to better understand the role that they have begun to undertake in regard to aircraft maintenance.

While a drone aircraft may vary in size and complexity depending upon the application in question, the drones that are present in maintenance procedures are closer to the systems that are used by hobbyists as compared to more advanced military types. With their use, a drone system may reduce costs and the amount of time spent on maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) procedures.

While an aircraft is stored within a hangar, the most common use of a drone system is for inspecting damage resulting from lighting strikes. Inspecting lighting damage manually can often be a cumbersome procedure, typically taking around four to six hours total. This is due to the damage that lighting may cause, requiring one to look for pits and burn marks that may detract from overall airworthiness. Rather than requiring multiple inspectors to traverse the fuselage of the aircraft to inspect all parts thoroughly, a drone may be operated for capturing high-resolution pictures that are later used by maintenance engineers for conducting damage assessments.

A drone surveillance system may also benefit standard scheduled maintenance procedures, allowing for scans to be conducted between heavy maintenance or prior to lease checks. During these scans, the drone may be used to look over the fuselage and other structures to ensure that all parts are in proper condition. With the use of onboard systems and database management, aircraft engineers may efficiently track and analyze inspection results, allowing for scheduled maintenance procedures to be carried out much quicker than normal. This can benefit operators in various ways, reducing the cost and time spent on maintenance.

While not particularly a current practice, a potential use of a drone system is for the delivery of spare parts. During the maintenance procedure, parts and components that have reached the end of their service life or are irreparably damaged will have to be replaced as soon as possible before the aircraft may be operated again. As a result, time is of the essence to ensure time and cost savings during MRO procedures. With the use of a delivery drone system, parts may potentially be delivered during the maintenance procedure so that engineers and personnel may focus on the most important operations.

Another potential innovation that is currently in the works is using drone systems for the automation of defect detections. Currently, various companies are compiling digital images of common defects, creating databases that can be compared to the images that are captured and supplied by drone systems. With geolocation and cloud based storage, engineers can pinpoint various damages for later visual inspection. Through automation, general maintenance, repair, and overhaul procedures can be greatly sped up, ensuring rapid procedures for the benefit of various operations. Additionally, the automation of defect detection will eventually remove the need for engineers to meticulously look over the fuselage of an aircraft, saving manpower as well.

As the potential uses of aircraft drones for maintenance, repair, and overhaul procedures continue to increase, such systems prove highly beneficial. As such, one should conduct research into a potential acquisition of a drone for MRO procedures if they have the financial capability to do so as the time and cost savings that they may bring are large. When conducting a purchase for drone parts and systems, it is important that reliable parts are procured so that such vehicles may be depended upon with ease. When you are in search of top quality drone parts and systems such as ignition assembly drone parts, launcher drone assembly components, ball end adapter drone products, hose assembly drone parts, and launcher drone components, there is no better alternative to Just NSN Parts.

Just NSN Parts is a website owned and operated by ASAP Semiconductor, and we are your sourcing solution for top aircraft parts with over 2 billion items currently in stock. Take the time to explore our vast offerings, and our team of industry experts is readily on standby to assist you throughout the purchasing process however necessary. If there are specific items that you are interested in, we invite you to take advantage of our RFQ service to quickly request quotes for your comparisons. If you have any questions regarding our offerings or services and wish to speak with a team member, give us a call or email at your earliest convenience and we would be more than happy to assist you however we can!


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December 20, 2022