Has this article been posted before?
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A good summary of the work done to get the 737NG wing box CVM technology approved. [You can skip over Pages 5-8 "CVM Performance Assessment" without missing much. Summary of that section: Smarter people than you and I have done the maths. It's been demonstrated and proven to work reliably].
The relevant points:
Each 737 aircraft requires ten CVM adhesive patches to be fitted for this one wing box crack detection application.
There are literally thousands of 737NGs in service that can eventually benefit from CVM technology for wing box crack detection. So tens of thousands of sensors across the worldwide fleet for this one application, if it is widely adopted. And why wouldn't it be!
To do this inspection the traditional way you need to take out several rows of seats, take out the cabin floor to access the area, remove the fuel vapour barrier and remove the anti-corrosion primer from the metal of the area to be inspected. Then you do an eddy current inspection. Once you determine all is OK and there are no cracks, then you have to reprime the metal, reinstall the fuel vapour barrier and put the floor and the seats back in. It's a hangar maintenance task with a team of people needed to do the work and the test.
With CVM technology, once the CVM sensors are installed, you just hop into the cargo/baggage compartment with your test box when the aircraft is not busy, e.g. on a routine night stop and plug in the test box to read the vacuum differential of the sensors. It should take about 20 minutes by the looks of it. At that point, the job's all done until next time. No need for a hangar visit at all. The test is done on the ramp by one person.
Do you seriously think any airline will want to keep doing this inspection the old way?
As the article says, this application of CVM is already approved by Boeing and published in the 737 Maintenance Manual as an alternate method of inspection.
And the share price goes down while people score points and down ramp. Stick to watching the donut and leave others to focus on the hole, would be my advice.
(20min delay)