Eurofighter Typhoon Spares

Posted by: Fast Air Photography Tags: RAF Coningsby, Spares, Typhoon Posted date: March 3, 2011 | No comment

The short URL of the present article is: https://www.fast-air.co.uk/FqfI4

Following on from my two other posts on the Typhoon spares situation (linked below in related posts) the NAO report on the Typhoon reveals more information on the situation.

Spares are provided by both a collaborative arrangement (all the partner nations) and individual contracts (each nation). The MoD has their commercial support contract with BAE for the airframe and Rolls-Royce for the engines. The performance targets for these are being largely met.

There has been a shortage of spares and long turnaround times on repair of equipment on the collaborative arrangement. The NAO provide an example of the current performance of the collaborative arrangement.

Ahead of the deployment of Typhoon to the Falklands in September 2009 a spares order was placed in 2008. 70% of this order arrived when required, 18% arrived late and 12% was still outstanding by August 2010. There are no penalties for late deliveries.

The repair contact has 65 critical items that have guaranteed repair times of between 30 to 120 days for failures that occurred in a specified way. Half of the items submitted by the RAF met the criteria to be repaired to date. Only 71% of items were repaired within the guaranteed repair time.

These shortages have contributed to a 13% shortfall of flying hours in 2009-10; a reoccurring theme for the last five years where the Typhoon fleet has constantly failed to meet its specified target despite the reduction of a total of 21,000 flying hours between 2006-07 and 2015-16 to reduce costs.

It’s against this backdrop that the RAF is taking parts from donor aircraft to keep the fleet flying as a whole and attempt to meet the specified target of flying hours. Attempts are being made to address this situation but collaborative support arrangements are complex in nature so I’m expecting the practice of sourcing parts from donor aircraft to continue.