Sun Jan 23, 2022 12:53 am
Hello everyone,
As some of you may have read, Qatar Airlines and Airbus are in a disagreement over the peeling paint on Qatar's new A350's. If you have seen photographs of the paint, it looks like the paint has bubbled or blistered up, cracked and left voids that exposed the underlying anti-static mesh and composite surfaces. Airbus has stated that this is not a airworthiness issue.
I have seen this same problem on our aircraft for several years now. It seems to occur on carbon fiber surfaces of all of our aircraft. Especially on our B757's, MD11's, and to a lesser extent on our B767's. The paint seems to not adhere to the carbon fiber substrate. We are currently replacing the elevators on a MD11 for this very problem, an expensive undertaking. For those of you who do not know, the elevators are a balanced flight surface, any work you do on them requires a balance calculation or to remove the surface and re-balance it in a fixture. We will remove the elevators and replace them and send the damaged ones out for re-work.
As I work in the structures side of maintenance, I must adhere to aerodynamic smoothness requirements. For example, fasteners that are not too high, or composite repairs that are as smooth as possible. So, I am somewhat confused as to how you can have bubbled up and peeling paint over an area of the aircraft and it is not considered critical to aircraft performance. It would seem to be detrimental. It is time consuming to fix on any surface, but very expensive and time consuming on a critical flight surface such as a rudder, elevator, or aileron.
Do any of our pilots or maintenance techs out there see this condition on your walk around inspections? Does anyone have any ideas on what may be the cause of this problem?
Gregory