Mainblade successfully conducted an outdoor drone inspection of A330 at an active airfield for the first time in Europe
11 August 2021: In the latest achievement by Mainblades, a fully automated outdoor airport drone inspection of a commercial aircraft was performed at an active airfield for the first time in European history. This airfield is an active military airport environment on which an Airbus A330 was made available for a drone inspection by aircraft owner Truenoord. This autonomous inspection of an Airbus A330 was arranged in cooperation with Fokker Techniek, Truenoord as well as the Dutch Drone Centre / Aviolanda at the airbase Woensdrecht. Currently, Mainblades operates inside hangars only due to airport limitations regarding the use of drones.
Mainblades Chief Technology Officer Jochem Verboom said, “In the United States, drones are already used for pilot projects in front of hangars, they have never before flown outside of an active airport in Europe. That is going to change in the future.”
Dejan Borota, Co-founder and Director of Mainblades said, “If an aircraft lands and it is damaged on the way, for example by lightning or birds, it must now first go to a closed location such as a hangar. That way you lose a lot of time. Besides this, hangar space is expensive to rent and not always available. And that while a drone inspection can also take place in the open air. Most airline operators want to inspect the aircraft in a minimum amount of time to reduce ground time and to optimize the fleet availability to have the aircraft in the air.”
Of lately the second party or MRO independent maintenance organizations and even lessor companies are showing interest in these technologies.
Aris Promos, head of Marketing and Sales at Fokker Techniek said, “Drones can make these processes much more efficient and coherent amongst all involved stakeholders. We see time saving, we see money saving and we see less subjectivity, because we are working with human beings.” The demonstration in Woensdrecht was a full success. “Today we were able to prove that drones hold more advantages than just the time savings. All in all it was a great day and we are excited to continue to showcase our technology to the aviation community moving foward.”
Aviation is a very innovative and technology driven industry. But still, in 2021 it is mandatory to have paper records in place. Technologies such as drones will continue to develop and will help to modernize aircraft maintenance services.
