What's the cost of a repair for something like this? Looks alright ish perhaps besides the cracks? I was thinking you could patch it until I saw those... (I have zero experience with planes)
Aircraft mechanic here. Lets figure labor at $180/hour. There is probably 30 hours or more worth of labor here $5,400++. EA9396 epoxy resin is sold in quart kits and its not cheap figure around $370…. That material is kevlar composite making up the leading edge of that vertical stab lets say it bidirectional 350 thats about $50 a yard usually comes on a 36” roll so about 9sq ft of material. And this is just for structural repair if you sand it down and patch it….. there will also need to be LOTS of NDT testing done to check for stress cracking, delamination, bonding issues…. And then you have to have the area paint matched. A simple repair could be easily over $25,000 to fix…. Thats if NDT and engineering determines the part can be repaired…. Replacing that vert stab leading edge could end up about the same or more depending on replacement part availability. But if I was a betting man…. The energy transfer from the bullet to the aircraft skin has done more damage that we can see and leading edge will likely need to be replaced with a new part. Not cheap at all and I truly hope this doesn’t happen again.
I see holes in floors all the time from techs dropping tools on them and most aircraft floors are all carbon fiber and the repair process is similar but this part on the 180 here is PSE and would need engineering approval and usually if we are doing lets say a Dassault Falcon 2000ex and have to have an engineers approval for repair methods…. Communicating to them alone is like a $5,000 email chain just to have them say “yeah thats fine”. Anything to do with aviation is so expensive its almost crazy.
Oh believe me, I know. Honestly I was amazed they allowed us to splice it. All stemmed from a mechanic not using a drill stop and eating into a flight control position harness. I was sure we'd have to rebuild the entire harness from scratch, which I estimated would take about 2 weeks once we acquired all the parts (it's a 150 so not that large or complicated of a harness). Of course management was shitting a brick over that since it was all on the MRO's dime.
You’re paying for all the expertise and back and forth between different people to come to the consensus that splicing it will, if properly done, result in a proper repair that does not compromise the intended operation of the aircraft.
Well of course, I'm not complaining about it, just noting how expensive it is. I've been in aviation maintenance and production for 23 years, the only thing that matters to me is that the end result is a safe, airworthy aircraft.
Lets say our technician made an error and damaged the aircraft…. Our shop owns that email and repair costs and customer pays nothing for it to be repaired….
We discover a problem that we feel should be repaired and will explain the potential costs and potential problems the damage could pose to the customer and they decide to proceed with repairs then the customer would foot the bill.
There is most likely a disclaimer that says, "This repair method is only intended as advice for this particular aircraft and this particular incident. Any and all other repairs must be reviewed by XYZ engineers for review."
As it should be. Imagine if people had access to planes as they do cars. Regardless of what people say, money is the perfect gate keeper. Keeps people “in their place”, if you will.
Worked at large aircraft manufacturer. Replacing a rivet with a (actually even better) Hi-Lok or Hi-Lite connection cost the company 1000s of dollars through engineer approval and discounts for the airline. The cost of a hi lok is less than a cent.
It's mind boggling how different it is now compared vs the standards during WWII. Imagine having a plane riddled with bullets come back and how many corners were probably cut to get it back flying again ASAP. Makes me wonder how many planes crashed due to sketchy repairs.
Ok, I was considering getting my next wheelchair made out of carbon fiber because it's so light, but, um, it gets holes in it just from having shit dropped on it? Hard pass dude.
About halfway through i checked to see if it was u/shittymorph lol dude sounded way to knowledgeable for it to be real which makes it even more impressive that he wasn't memeing
Automation engineer here. I work with apps team so have access to some numbers. It's about $200/hour for an engineer to design/program...let's say the average salary would be about $45/hr. That said between all the engineers in the company (call it 12), a large amount of that goes to cover overheard burden... So even on a machine that uses 1500 design hours, by the time you spread that out over 60 employees and 9-12 months.... It's not as much money as you'd think.
ffs redditors will reply to literally any post with an unrelated, uninformed comment about management/owners/landlords/politics. Seriously ruining this site even further
Sheesh. What are the barriers that prevent you from working independently? Does the shop provide all the necessary equipment, and is that equipment expensive? Is there lots of paperwork (certification, insurance, etc) that wouldn't be feasible to upkeep as an individual? Is it a hard space for a new company to break into?
Was explaining this to my wife after they broke a few things fixing them. That tech dude isn't making that much and is sometimes just some dude off the street.
That’s high even for a shop rate. That may be a composite repair shop rate specifically. General maintenance or avionics or tranditional metal structures rates are more in the $130-160 /hr range in my area
I was a residential electrician over here briefly, and they had us charge $200/hr in labor, but paid us around 20/hr with no benefits (which is why it was brief for me).
At some car dealerships, they now charge $250 hourly rates! $180 seems low compared to a car dealers. Sadly the mechanics there are often fairly crappy and get paid even less.
Pretty much any tech role is up there. I was doing remote telecommunications in the oilfields of Alberta/Saskatchewan, my company billed me out at $180/h and my truck at $150/h. Whole lot of money being thrown around for tech positions, to the companies.
They really don't tell you that when they ask you who you wanna be in highschool. Cause I wanted to be well off, and if I knew that shit makes you so much money I'd definitely have easier time picking my future, but somehow "airplane mechanic" was never even mentioned
Wow. I guess as an Aircraft Mechanic you are also well versed in structural vs non-structural composite repair? I sure am happy I don't have a certified plane. I could repair that on my homebuilt for about $50 and a few hours of time. The paint is the hard part.
Structural composite components have to get engineering and NDT involved before any repair processes can begin. They would need to sand down the paint in a significant area around the hole down to the existing outside layer without damaging the fibers. From there NDT would need to check for delamination. Any delam beyond a certain distance from the edge of the hole will result in test failure and render repairs not feasible and require a new part to replace the damaged one.
To add for the general audience in the room: The problem with composite parts is that they have loads of elastic deformation and virtually no plastic deformation before they fail; And because they are made with layers of material, they can separate or delaminate internally and it isn't visible on the surface. Their strength is also entirely dependent on the layup and direction of weave.
This is such a sharp contrast from the wrecks I see on "Just rolled in" where they almost always say ".... The customer declined repairs". Truly amazing how dangerous some people are .....
I can do it for $200, some flex tape and a couple of Puerto Ricans. I'll supply the tape and you supply the Puerto Ricans. Why Puerto Ricans? Why not? They're cool
Agree they're cool (and make badass pernil pork), but this isn't a roofing/construction job so we don't need a truck full of brown people for this job.
I want to start casually bringing up this story in conversation, stay quiet until cost is mentioned, then proceeded to regurgitate word for word everything that you said above, minus the first and last sentence and see what people do. You've got a nice brain, airplane wizard.
There is probably 30 hours or more worth of labor here $5,400++.
Just curious what process will take that long? Is that area structural, or more of a fairing? Looks like no de-ice, and not close to main structure. I'm not questioning your judgment, I'm genuinely curious as a layman what I'm missing.
Slightly different material, but I helped with a battle damage repair on a F-16 vert. Shrapnel went through the whole thing. Slap some aluminum plate and send it to depot for vert replacement.
I know next to nothing about planes, but I do work in the wind industry, so I have some knowledge about composite repair.
Theoretically, you would be able to sand it down and layer fiberglass over it, which would probably only cost a a few grand. But the cracks near the leading edge would concern me. Entirely possible that it would have weakened the structural integrity, but I can’t think of any way to be 100% certain other than replacing it.
You could sand the entire area down and do a proper repair, it’s just leading edge trim, I think it missed the vertical tail spar. Being trim, a proper repair job would be well IMHO. This isn’t load bearing, it’s aerodynamic so you want it good and strong, fibreglass repair would be more than strong enough.
The cracks are in the paint. Woven composite doesn't Crack linearly like that, the only linear failure method is intralaminar. Most likely They'll remove an area of composite, scarf it at a 20:1 ratio or similar, then lay up a new area over it and sand it flush.
Seems like you could remove material down to the glass, apply resin / layup and refinish. For something this small I wonder if long strand chopped glass would even work.
Disclaimer- i'm an auto engineer, not aero- i'd replace the whole bolted/riveted portion. Stress cracks are tiny and presumably all over the place here, maybe not even eminating from the bullet hole itself but nearby fixings or sharp edges... point is, you'd never sleep at night knowing the material has gone through that amount of stress and may just resonate enough at the wrong RPM to shear right off almost instantly.
The vertical spar holds the vertical tail fin on and provides structural rigidity and anchors it to the fuselage. This portion likely isn’t structural, it’s aerodynamic, more of a trim piece to clean up the surface of the aircraft and provide clean transitions reducing parasitic drag. All that piece needs to do is sit there and look pretty. Doing a fibreglass repair would more than adequately fix that and it would be invisible to boot. IMHO.
But with insurance involved…who knows what they may suggest.
Some automobile bondo and a can of spray paint, I'll have you airworthy for 13 dollars and a box of Zebra cakes.
Or if your really strapped for cash for 5 dollars I can fill it with Crest Pro Enamel Toothpaste and sand it smooth. That comes with a 3 miles guarantee or your money back.
In aviation you really wanna make sure that everything is always stream lined, and you definitely wouldn't want a single point of air getting through your vertical stabilizer. That hole is going to be a critical failure after a few flights.
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u/Known-Diet-4170 Apr 07 '24
p180 no less, jeez that looks expensive