Summary
- Air Astana completes its first six-year C-Check, becoming the one airline in Kazakhstan capable of independently perform this intense maintenance procedure.
- C-Checks are critical for protected flight operations and involve disassembling and testing every system onboard the aircraft.
- Air Astana’s in-house maintenance facility reduces costs and establishes the airline as a frontrunner in Central Asia while improving service quality and compliance with international standards.
Air Astana, the flag carrier of the Central Asian nation Kazakhstan, accomplished its first six-year C-Check on the airline’s primary engineering and technical operations facility. This maintenance check was performed on an Airbus A321neo and took 20 full days of labor and required 7,800 man-hours of labor.
In line with the carrier, Air Astana is the one airline in Kazakhstan capable of independently complete the C1 and C2 maintenance checks which might be required on just about all Airbus aircraft. Nevertheless, today marks the completion of the primary six-year C-Check, as reported by AeroBuzz. After an in depth audit by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), the corporate was given a license to perform these intense procedures back in 2019.
Since being granted approval, the airline has serviced 24 different aircraft at its primary facilities in Astana and Almaty. Eight more A320 family aircraft are due for six-year C-Checks in 2024.
What exactly is a C-Check?
By way of maintenance operations, a C-Check is probably going probably the most intense of all procedures a jet will encounter throughout its lifetime. They often take multiple weeks and could be difficult for airlines as they require planes to be out of service for a big time period.
Photo: Air Astana
This sort of inspection is performed once every six years throughout an aircraft’s service lifetime and is used to look at the condition of the complete plane. Almost every system onboard the jet can be disassembled and put through multiple rounds of testing to make sure every little thing is functioning appropriately.
Air Astana Airbus A320neo Returns To Service Following Engine Failure Incident
It’s unclear if the incident was related to the continuing problems with Pratt & Whitney’s GTF engines.
These checks are critical to making sure protected flight operations, and areas just like the wings, engines, and control surfaces are all given special attention. In lots of circumstances, engineers will order work to be done on different components, requiring planes to be grounded even longer.
What is the advantage?
Maintaining an EASA-approved in-house maintenance facility provides Air Astana with several different advantages. The airline doesn’t must depend on foreign maintenance facilities (as many carriers do with Lufthansa Technik).
Photo: Markus Mainka | Shutterstock
Moreover, when work is required on aircraft components, Air Astana doesn’t must ferry its planes off to a secondary location. Airline officials were excited by today’s news, with Temirlan Bagashar, the carrier’s Technical Support Manager issuing the next statement in a press release:
“Carrying out complex repairs in-house allows the airline to ascertain control over the technique of timely maintenance of its aircraft and reduce costs for all these work, which previously required the involvement of foreign corporations and ferrying aircraft abroad to facilities in Europe, Russia and China. Today, our qualifications and professionalism, in addition to the equipment base, allow Air Astana to perform quality C-check work inside Kazakhstan.”
Air Astana’s advanced maintenance network also positions the airline to ascertain itself as a frontrunner in Central Asia. Other carriers, which can lack C-Check capable facilities could grow to depend on the Kazakh flag carrier’s extensive network and resources.
Photo: Airbus
Moreover, the continual development of Air Astana’s relationship with EASA will come as a profit to the nation as an entire. With more maintenance facilities and compliance with international standards, travelers to, from, and inside Kazakhstan will experience safer and more consistent service.
The carrier will not be just leading the way in which when it comes to maintenance but additionally has targeted international expansion and EASA collaboration in a variety of alternative ways. For instance, Air Astana opened the primary EASA-certified Flight Training Center back in September 2023.