OREANDA-NEWS. December 17, 2008. S7 Airlines, Russia’s largest air carrier by number of transported passengers on domestic routes, announces the completion of the first C-check* of an Airbus A319 in Novosibirsk, reported the press-centre of S7 Airlines.

The maintenance of the Airbus A319 airliner was conducted by OOO Sibir Tekhnik, a subsidiary of S7 Airlines, from November 16 through December 2, 2008.

In September 2008, Sibir Tekhnik successfully passed an international audit to expand its sphere of activities and obtained a certificate to perform C-checks, the most complex form of maintenance, on airplanes of the Airbus A319 and Airbus A320 families.

Sibir Tekhnik is Russia’s first company east of the Urals to perform such maintenance on foreign-made airplanes. Obtaining this certificate will allow Sibir Tekhnik to perform C-checks not only on S7 Airlines’ airplanes, but also those of other Russian air carriers, which will reduce their expenditures on airplane servicing. Airbus and Boeing airliners used to be flown to Moscow, Oman or Germany for maintenance.

“We worked on this for almost six years. Sibir Tekhnik began working with the airplanes of this family in 2002. We performed only simple maintenance at first, but gradually our specialists gained experience and eventually we obtained a certificate to conduct C-checks and perform airplane maintenance. We also managed to finish the work two days faster than we had planned,” says Vladimir Yenin, director of Sibir Tekhnik’s maintenance center for foreign made aviation equipment.
Currently OOO Sibir Tekhnik carries out various forms of maintenance on Airbus A310, Airbus A319, Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 airplanes. After the first C-check of the Airbus A319 the company will conduct C-checks of six more airliners of this family operated by S7 Airlines.

* The C-check is one of the most complex forms of airplane maintenance, involving comprehensive checks of engines, wing mechanisms and other assemblies. It is performed every 20 months for the A319 and every 15 months or 4,000 hours of flight for the Boeing 737.

The less complex A-check is performed after every 250 hours of flight. The even simpler daily check is performed every day. The simplest form of airplane maintenance is called the transit check, which is performed before every departure.