Maintenance milestone
It’s history in the making, a proud moment for Air Niugini and Papua New Guinea to see another airline engaging our engineering and maintenance services.
Air Niugini has expanded its in-house heavy maintenance checks to include aircraft from other regional airlines, recently working on a Solomon Airlines Dash 8.
Air Niugini managing director, Alan Milne, says it is a milestone for the airline. He says the expansion of the checks to other airlines is a result of a training and professional development program introduced by Air Niugini several years ago for engineering and maintenance staff.
“It’s history in the making, a proud moment for Air Niugini and Papua New Guinea to see another airline engaging our engineering and maintenance services.
“With my engineering background, I can assure everyone that the staff here at Air Niugini engineering are some of the best I have seen so far. I also acknowledge the board and
management of Solomon Airlines for the trust and confidence they have placed in us.”
The managing director says many airlines in the region send aircraft to Europe for heavy maintenance checks. “So we see Air Niugini perfectly positioned to start doing that maintenance,” he says.
A heavy maintenance check, also known as a ‘C’ check, is a mandatory major inspection, carried out every two or three years after a certain amount of flying hours. Lighter ‘A’ and “B’ checks are carried out every two to six months.
A ‘C’ check allocates sufficient time for technicians and maintenance staff to thoroughly check all the structure and components of an aircraft. The duration of a check will depend on the amount of work that needs to be done, but may take two to five months.