Never had the flight safety issue become such a talking point in India than in the last 2-3 months because of several incidents which mainly related to landing gear problems.
With the culprits being Air India and Indian, aircraft belonging to these two national carriers had developed major problems, even leading to Civil Aviation Secretary Ashok Chawla seeking explanation on these incidents.
In one case, an AI plane’s nosewheel capsized after which it got stuck on the Delhi airport runway for an entire day and night on April 10 leading to flight disruptions. A few days later, an Indian aircraft suffered a snag as the nosewheel did not retract and remained stuck firmly following which the pilot made an emergency landing.
These are only two examples of several incidents which may have resulted in huge disasters and a majority of these cases occurred because of hydraulic problems.
Perhaps recognising this as one of the major problems troubling the industry, the Lufthansa Technik (LT) of Germany, one of the world’s major aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) companies, has set up a separate division for landing gears.
LT launched this dedicated product division – called Total Landing Gear Support (TLS) —in 2006. Besides Hamburg, the TLS facilities have been established in Los Angeles, Beijing and London.
These facilities offer one-stop shop for the airlines with the wheel problems. “Under TLS, Lufthansa Technik accompanies its customers’ landing gears over its entire life and assumes total responsibility the moment the aircraft is purchased —from the monitoring of time in operation to overhaul, exchange gear, leasing and loans right through to resale”, says LT’s Landing Gear Services business head Klaus Koster.
Koster’s colleague and TLS business services director Michael Kirstein told visiting Indian journalists at the Hamburg facility: “We follow the strategy of any workshop – maintain a steady, standard procedure as the landing gear leg proceeds through a sequence of predetermined stages, from disassembly to stripping, damage assessment, electroplating and beyond”.
According to Kirstein, Jet Airways had taken the TLS contract for 2006 and 2007 during which eight landing gear overhauls were done. “We want a long term contract with Jet and will hold talks with them in August”, he added.
TLS performed overhaul of 1,000 landing gears (called `legs’ in aviation jargon) which is likely to settle at 2000 per year from 2016 onwards. The next few years are likely to see a jump in landing gear overhauls. Overhaul of landing gears takes four to six weeks.
Referring to questions on India incidents, Kirstein said: “These incidents may be mainly because of the countries to which these aircraft fly... If you fly to Middle-East, the problem of sand and dust could be more than say, flights to Europe and US.  Landing gear problems may also occur because of their hitting the runway hard on touchdown, bad condition of runways, corrosion on chrome etc leading to faster overhauls”.