[BITList] More - Engine Change Time-Lapse

[John Feltham]

From a thread and response to that thread....




SWA B737.  Cool time-lapse video of an engine change (although I cringed when someone grabbed slip-joint pliers!)
 
http://aviationblog.dallasnews.com/2013/03/hey-airplane-geeks-southwest-airlines-changes-out-an-engine.html/




From my brother, Graham, ex-Boeing engineer, in response to how often do they swap out aircraft engines like that...

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Whenever one blows up!  :-)    (which is sorta true)
 
Typically commercial airline engines stay "on-wing" for 5,000-10,000 hours, and the airplanes fly about 300-400 hours a month, so that works out to about 1 to 2 years.  It depends a lot on the engine and the airline's maintenance.  The 3-spool Rolls-Royce engines go a lot loner - maybe about 15,000?  I think the record for staying on-wing is an RB211-524 which got to ~21,000 hours, and then they just pulled it anyhow.  Having said that, most airline maintenance programs have the engines maintained "on condition" meaning you don't have to pull them due to a calendar or hour limit - you wait until something fails.  They do need to track the hours and cycles on the engine modules or components, which typically have life limits on the order of 50,000 or 100,000 flight hours or XX,000 cycles, so the components are replaced every X number of engine overhauls.
 
Too much info.?  :-)

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:

> How often do they swap out an engine like that?

A rough idea here?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123682601646404111.html

ooroo
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