Here's an example of how the CaseBank solutions can save time and money. An airliner was ready to take off when a problem was discovered: there was no airflow in the cabin. Although it was obvious that something was wrong, the aircraft's built-in test systems showed everything to be working correctly. The flight had to be canceled while repair technicians investigated the problem. Three hours later, a technician found the source of the fault - a loose pipe fitting in the tail of the aircraft. Once the fault was located, it was repaired in a matter of minutes and the aircraft was released for service.
In the next few months, at that same airline, the same problem occurred three more times on different aircraft at different locations. In each case it was necessary to cancel the flight. None of the technicians assigned to find the problem knew that it had occurred before. If CaseBank solutions had been available, the guided diagnostic troubleshooting would have alerted them to the findings of the technician who solved the original problem, and the last three cancellations could have been avoided, with a significant saving in cost and customer satisfaction for the airline.
Failure to resolve unexpected faults (elusive faults) on the first attempt can result in rapidly escalating costs and operational disruptions due to flight cancellations, gate delays, unsubstantiated part removals, complete out-of-service periods, and unplanned overtime and shift bonuses.
Elusive faults are the most difficult type of fault that technicians can face because they are not always correctly addressed by existing diagnostics aids, such as built-in tests or fault-isolation manuals. These problems are often characterized by intermittent symptoms, possibly caused by unpredictable conditions such as aging, environmental factors, or manufacturing error.
Elusive faults consume a disproportionate share of the unplanned maintenance-related expenses due to the difficulty of determining their root cause. Troubleshooters often have no convenient or timely way of knowing that another mechanic has encountered a similar problem and has solved it already. Until now, they've been on their own and often in the dark about how to find a solution quickly.
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