The Problem
A Gulfstream G200 with a damaged frame, due to be delivered on a tight timeline.
It happens. People make mistakes. The night shift drilled off a blanking plate wrong and drilled the frame in a few locations. As luck would have it, one was right through the edge of the frame and the other was in the radius.
The aircraft was down for a cabin communications upgrade. Of course, the aircraft was on a tight schedule and this happened too close to the end of that scheduled down time. Gulfstream was able to provide a repair scheme, but time was an issue. And without a doubt, the shop was going to be on the hook for the cost, so there was some price sensitivity.
Our Approach
We needed to get them flying again. This required co-ordination with our colleagues at Transport Canada to approve the frame repair.
The Solution
A section of frame had to be replaced in one area and a reinforcing strap installed in another area.
A two-step process got the airplane back in the air on time.
The first step involved a temporarily low inspection interval. That gave us time to complete a thorough damage tolerance analysis to restore the inspections to a normal interval.
The Result
We issued a Repair Design Approval (RDA) and got them flying again on time.
