A holistic approach to general aviation aircraft structural failure prevention in Australia

Ageing aircraft are becoming a major issue in the general aviation (GA) industry, both in terms of safety and maintenance and support cost. Ensuring a sound structure is considered one of the primary challenges in this area, it is, therefore, attracting the attention of the regulating authorities. The Civil Aviation Safety Agency (CASA) has taken a mixture of actions to tackle the various issues related to the diverse Australian GA ageing aircraft fleet. Further efforts focus on increasing the awareness of the different parties engaged in aircraft operations, maintenance and design, as well as quantification of the associated risk. In this frame a holistic approach is proposed to cover the various aspects, emphasizing the use of cost-effective structural health monitoring (SHM) systems and web-based education and information dissemination on ageing aircraft issues.