Newsgroups: sci.aeronautics.airliners
From: ehahn@fairlite.mitre.org (Ed Hahn)
Subject: Re: safest airframes ?
Date: 31 Aug 94 02:17:22

Pete Mellor <pm@csr.city.ac.uk> said:

   <Concorde stuff deleted>
   Every nut, bolt and washer must be traceable through all its moves between
   the various serials, and all their failures, inspections and repairs recorded.
   His sister works on the database which records all the parts and their
   movements. Apparently, it is *enormous* and requires the dedicated power of
   two large mainframes.

Um, the major components are kept track of, but nuts, bolts, and
washers are, according to standard practice in aircraft maintenance,
discarded.  There is no serial number tracking for expendables (when
was the last time you saw a serial number on a washer?), but
components which are re-used, such as pitot tubes and other
repairables, are tracked by serial number.

BTW, I would be surprised if the actual database required two
mainframes for raw computing power -- more likely there are two
mainframes to make sure the system is available worldwide to various
maintenance stations 24 hours a day, every day.  At the airlines I
worked at, these computers did a LOT more than just parts tracking,
such as aircraft scheduling and crew tracking.

ed

////////   Ed Hahn | ehahn@mitre.org | (703) 883-5988   \\\\\\\\
The above comment reflects the opinions of the author, and does not
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Really, I wouldn't kid you about a thing like this.