General Aircraft Maintenance Safety Precautions

In this post, I will only give general Aircraft Maintenance Safety precautions, for more specific procedures you are advised to refer to the manufacturer’s maintenance manual, your company regulations, and regulatory regulations.

Safety while working on Aircraft

Aircraft maintenance work includes inspection and repair of aircraft and its components. Good work practices ensure aircraft and worker safety.

Safety is everyone’s business. However, maintenance personnel must watch for their own safety and also of other colleagues working around them.

Keeping the cleanliness of shop, hangar and ramp is essential and first step to ensure safety and efficient maintenance.

Communication is key to ensuring everyone’s safety. If anyone are conducting their actions in an unsafe manner, communicate with them, reminding them of their safety.

Working with electrical equipment

When dealing with electricity, two factors that affect safety are fear and overconfidence. To safely deal with electrical equipment, avionics technician must have a working knowledge of the principles of electricity and a healthy respect for its capability to do both work and damage, because small mistakes or negligence can cause serious injury.

The use of proper safety equipment can provide a psychological assurance of workers. The use of rubber gloves, safety glasses, rubber or grounded safety mats, and other safety equipment contributes to the overall safety of the technician working on or with electrical equipment.

Electricity can be a cause of the fire. One way to prevent electrical fires is to keep the area around electrical work or electrical equipment clean, uncluttered, and free of all unnecessary flammable substances.

Working with compressed gases

Ensure safety around compressed gases. Always follow instructions while working with compressed air or nitrogen bottle. Compressed gases are explosive in nature in that, should a gas-pressurized container fail, it will disintegrate violently.

During charging the gas pressure should be charged or released slowly. Never charge to pressures greater than the maximum specified.

All connections should be tight, and bottles, charging equipment, and gauges should be labeled and within the test date. Always keep blanks on connections when not in use.

Never direct a jet of high-pressure gas at the skin, it can cause serious injury.

Safety around hazardous materials

Material safety is the most important regard to shop safety. If you are working in a shop, ensure the hazard marking label on hazardous material. Diamond-shaped labels (risk diamond) are a simple and quick way to determine the risk of hazardous material within the associated container. To ensure proper personnel safety you should always follow the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS).

Hearing protection

A ramp is a place of dangerous activity. Aircraft Mechanics who perform maintenance in line on the ramp must constantly be aware of what is going on around them.

The noise on the ramp comes from various sources. Some of these sources of noise are other aircraft operations at the airport, APU running, and ground handling equipment. Combined with all sources together, the noise on the ramp can cause hearing loss.

Hearing protection is also essential when working with rivet guns, pneumatic drills, or other loud tools.

There are many types of hearing protection available, Earmuffs is one of those. Always use earmuff according to noise labels. Noise label is universally measured in dB (decibel). The decibel (dB) is a unit used to measure the intensity of a sound.

Foreign Object Damage (FOD)

Foreign object damage (FOD) is any damage to aircraft, personnel, or equipment due to any loose objects. The best way to control FOD, keep ramp, and operation areas clean.

Tools control program helps to prevent FOD. Never leave tools or other items around the intake of a turbine engine.

The modern jet engine creates a low-pressure area in front of the engine inlet that causes any loose object to be sucked into the engine. The exhaust of jet engines can propel loose objects at great distances with enough force to damage anything that is hit.

The importance of a FOD control program should not be ignored when a technician considers the cost of engines, components, or human life.

Safety around Airplanes

Turbine engine intakes and exhaust can also be very hazardous areas, propeller too in the case of a turboprop engine. No can assume that pilot mind and activities during the taxiing of aircraft. Always stay away in view of the pilot.

Be aware of aircraft fluids like ATF (Air Turbine Fuel), Engine oil, and hydraulic oil, that can be detrimental to the skin.

When operating ground support equipment around the aircraft, ensure that there is sufficient space or clearance between GSE and aircraft, and secure it, so that it can’t roll into the aircraft.