Cluster of aeronautical maintenance companies in Brazil

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5th International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Industrial Management
XV Congreso de Ingeniería de Organización
Cartagena, 7 a 9 de Septiembre de 2011
Cluster of aeronautical maintenance companies in Brazil
Marcio Cardoso Machado1, Ligia Maria Soto Urbina1, Michelle Aparecida
Gomes Eller1, Rodrigo Arnaldo Scarpel1
1 Dpto. de Organização. Divisão de Engenharia Mecânica. Instituto Tecnológico de
Aeronáutica. Praça Marechal Eduardo Gomes, 50 - Vila das Acácias – CEP 12.228-900 – São
José dos Campos – SP – Brasil. cardoso@ita.br , ligia@ita.br , mi_eller@yahoo.com.br ,
rodrigo@ita.br
Key words: Technical Capability, Aeronautical Maintenance, Brazil
1. Introduction
Brazilian domestic market for air transportation is the largest in Latin American and it has
grown at a rate of 10% between 2003 and 2008 reaching over 50 million trips per year
(McKinsey & Company, 2010). According to the McKinsey study, it is likely that this sector
continues to grow at very relevant rates, given the expectation of income growth and therefore
the demand for air transportation for poorer regions and classes in Brazil. Comparative data
from August 2009 to August 2010 published by ANAC (National Civil Aviation Agency -
Brazil) shows an annual growth around 34% in the demand for domestic flights and 28.5%
for the external market. This air transportation growth requires an aircraft maintenance
industry capable to support such an expansive process, without any prejudice to flight safety
and continued airworthiness. Therefore, it is expected that Brazilian maintenance sector
receives strong investments for years to come, generating important returns for the economy
of Brazil. Under this scenario, it can be expected that the expansion of maintenance sector
will contribute to Brazil's economic development through: increasing the participation of
small and medium companies, due to the existence of small capital and technological barriers;
the expansion of technical and technological job opportunities; the geographical spread of
capabilities in maintenance services, with the entry of these activities into regions with lower
levels of air traffic; encouragement to develop a local industry of aircraft spare parts.Thus, in
order to support the decision making of investors and the development of public policies, it is
necessary to build an overview of current conditions of the Brazilian aviation maintenance
industry. Some of the papers found in the literature review explore the aircraft maintenance
from other perspectives that seek to improve the efficiency of the sector. As an example,
Nascimento (2006) and Rodrigues et al. (2010) study the costs perspective, while Ando and
Costa (2004) and Papakostas et al. (2010) focus their efforts in the selection of maintenance
strategies. Moreover, Vilela et al. (2010) examine the relationship of accidents with aircraft
maintenance and operational safety recommendations. Other authors focus on classical
maintenance subjects like systems analysis for failure diagnosis (Silva Filho et al., 2005);
reliability and its relationship to cost control (Mata Filho et al., 1998) and maintenance
planning (Samaranayake, 2006 and Samaranayake et al., 2007). In this context, this paper
aims to expand knowledge about the aircraft maintenance industry in Brazil exploring the

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information provided by ANAC, with the main goal of building an overview which reveals
the technical distribution of the Brazilian niches of capability. More specifically, this paper
begins with an exposition of the basic concepts of aviation maintenance activity. Next, it is
presented the Brazilian regulatory context, which circumscribes and certifies the activities that
companies have the technical competence to perform. Finally, it was possible to analyze the
concentration of different types of certification of aircraft repair station, regarding the
certifications set obtained by them
2. Aeronautical Maintenance
2.1. Activities of aircraft maintenance
The aircraft maintenance can be divided into two activities that, despite being fully
associated, possess different characteristics. The first activity is related to aircraft
maintenance as single equipment, and the second activity concerns components maintenance
that will serve as inputs to the first one. This distinction is necessary because the aircraft
maintenance operations follow rules that go beyond the technical expertise necessary to
perform maintenance activities. One example of this is the need for an intense struggle against
the occurrence of human error when performing a task, because an aircraft, after maintenance,
can not be tested to simulate flight conditions. However, this does not mean that human error
in component maintenance is tolerated, but that the principles that guide their struggle are
more closely related to the quality of the process itself than to issues of flight safety. Thus, as
explained by Cheung Ip and Lu (2005), there is a difficulty in allocating specialized
workforce in aircraft maintenance.
2.2. Regulatory Framework of Brazilian Aircraft Maintenance
The National Civil Aviation Agency – Brazil (ANAC), has as mission to promote safety and
excellence in the civil aviation system, in order to contribute to the country's development and
welfare of Brazilian society. Therefore, it is its responsibility to establish and monitor the
implementation of regulations that govern the activities of maintenance companies. In regard
to the activities of aircraft repair station, the ANAC classifies companies according to the type
of services that they are able to perform. Thus, they may be aircraft, cells, engines, propellers,
rotors, equipment and parts of those sets repair stations. To make this division possible, the
ANAC has also established standards, classes and limitations on the maintenance activity.
Thus, any company that wants to be classified as an aircraft repair station, should submit a
request to the ANAC for a certification, specifying which aircraft, engine, propeller, rotor,
equipment or component, they will perform the maintenance service. Based on Brazilian Civil
Aviation Regulation (RBHA) 145 it is evaluated the technical and organization qualifications
of the company and if confirmed these qualifications, a Brazilian Repair Station Certificate
(CHE) is issued to that company.
It should also be noted that, airlines companies that possess RBHA 121 (Certification and
Operation of Large Airplanes Domestic and Flag Operators) or RBHA 135 (Certification and
Operation of Small Airplanes and Helicopter Domestic and Flag Operators) certification, do
not need to certificate its repair stations according to RBHA 145, to perform services on its
own fleet or, under contract, to another airline company also certified by those same RBHAs.
The qualifications that are granted by these regulations are important to a better understanding
of the maintenance sector in Brazil. Therefore, are described below the main requirements
that they impose on this businesses sector.

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2.3. Certification Technical Domain
The Brazilian Repair Station Certificates issued by the ANAC, refers to aircraft repair stations
and they are based on patterns and classes as shown in Table 1.
Table 1 – Aircraft Maintenance Companies Patters and Classes.
Pattern Class
Pattern C –
Maintenance,
modifications and
cells repair
Class 1 - Composite structure aircraft, with maximum approved takeoff
weight up to 5670 kg (aircraft) or 2730 kg (Helicopters) per aircraft
model.
Class 2 - Metal structure aircraft, with maximum approved takeoff
weight up to 5670kg (aircraft) or 2730 kg (Helicopters) per aircraft
model.
Class 3 - Composite structure aircraft, with maximum approved takeoff
weight over 5670 kg (aircraft) or 2730 kg (Helicopters) per aircraft
model.
Class 4 - Metal structure aircraft, with maximum approved takeoff
weight over 5670kg (aircraft) or 2730 kg (Helicopters) per aircraft
model.
Pattern D –
Maintenance,
modifications and
aircraft engines
repair
Class 1 – Conventional engines with up to 400 H.P., per model.
Class 2 - Conventional engines with over 400 H.P., per model.
Class 3 – Turbine engines, per model.
Pattern E –
Maintenance,
modifications, and
aircraft propellers
and rotors repair
Class 1 - Wood propellers, metal or composite, fixed pitch, per model.
Class 2 – All other propellers, per model.
Class 3 – Helicopters rotors, per model.
Pattern F –
Maintenance and
aircraft equipment
repair
Class 1 - Communications and navigation aircraft equipment, per model
Class 2 - Aircraft instruments, per instrument type.
Class 3 - Mechanical accessories, aircraft electrical and electronics, per
accessory model.
Pattern H –
Specialized services
Single Class - Specific activities for the maintenance implementation
that aeronautical authority upheld, per type service (e.g., nondestructive
testing, floats, emergency equipment, rotor shovels, screen coating).
The certificates are issued considering patterns and classes, for example, a company “F1”
certified means that it classified as Pattern F, Class 1.
Companies that are certified under the RBHA 121 or 135 are dispensed to be certified under
the RBHA 145. However, the set of resources and facilities required for maintenance,
preventive maintenance, modifications and repairs possessed or hired by the certified
company can not be inferior to the set of facilities and resources required by the RBHA 145 to
certificate an aircraft repair station for performing services of the same type at equipment
operated by the certified company.
There are hundreds of repair stations certified as maintenance repair station in Brazil and in
this work this scenario will be valued.

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3. Research design and methodology
This paper is a part of a research work about Brazilian Aeronautical Maintenance Companies.
The starting point has been a data collecting during two years (2009–2010). Data was
collected through the National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC) database. Methodology used
based on the research terminology of Yin (1994) has been exploratory and descriptive based
on a case study with both qualitative and quantitative approach. Exploratory studies are
appropriate when the research problem is difficult to delimit, the problem is not well known
and the available knowledge is not absolute (Yin, 2001). It was used additional methods of
data collection to triangulate the data obtained from the ANAC database like ANAC
regulations, specialized internet sites and literature review.
The purpose of this study is to expand knowledge about the aircraft maintenance industry in
Brazil in order to gain a better understanding about the technical distribution of the Brazilian
niches of capability, as well as identifies the profile of the certification cluster according to
the technical domain of certification.
For achieving that purpose a exploratory study about the Brazilian Aircraft Maintenance
Industry will be developed be developed by analyzing already established and known facts on
a new perspective that permits to have a comprehensive understanding the Brazilian Aircraft
Maintenance Industry.
3.1. Combined Certifications
The number of combined certifications (companies that possesses two certifications
simultaneously) regarding to different classes and patterns of certifications are shown in Table
2. Diagonally it is possible to note the absolute total of certifications for each class and pattern
and also the number of companies certified in more than one class and pattern of certificate
are shown combining lines and columns.
Table 2: Combined certifications matrix
C1 C2 C3 C4 D1 D2 D3 E1 E2 E3 F1 F2 F3 H
C1
86 83 1 5 55 7 6 12 13 16331 19
C2
83 279 675 115 9127 19 42 15 44 37 123 77
C3
16911070123376
C4
575 1209 13 0139 622 10 59 53 153 129
D1
55 115 113 134 838 20 28 68775 37
D2
7900810 11201010
D3
6127 7139 38 1244 938 15 71 66 179 135
E1
12 19 0 6 20 1 9 30 29 13225 17
E2
13 42 122 28 238 29 60 518 16 49 34
E3
115 210 6 0 15 1 5 15 8 8 12 9
F1
644 359 8 1 71 318 8112 98 104 70
F2
337 353 7 0 66 216 898 106 100 62
F3
31 123 7153 75 1179 25 49 12 104 100 346 202
H
19 77 6129 37 0135 17 34 970 62 202 260
Therefore, data in Table 2 demonstrate that, from the total of 279 certificates issued to the C2
type, 115 were issued for aircraft repair stations that also have certifications D1 type. In the
same way, from the total of 106 certifications issued for the F2 type, 100 were issued for
aircraft repair stations that also have certifications F3 type. However, according to Fávero
(2009), an important aspect to be considered in a cluster analysis is the use of variables with

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different measures, which can lead to a distortion of the group structure. This influence of
variables different magnitudes can be solved with variables standardization.
Thus, the data presented in Table 2 were standardized by the maximum amplitude method,
which attributes to each variable the maximum value of 1, and is calculated by dividing the
value of each variable by the maximum value of the class analyzed. Table 3 shows those
standardized values of the variables obtained from Table 2.
Table 3: Standardized Combined Certifications Matrix
C1 C2 C3 C4 D1 D2 D3 E1 E2 E3 F1 F2 F3 H
C1
1,000 0,965 0,012 0,058 0,640 0,081 0,070 0,140 0,151 0,012 0,070 0,035 0,360 0,221
C2
0,297 1,000 0,022 0,269 0,412 0,032 0,455 0,068 0,151 0,054 0,158 0,133 0,441 0,276
C3
0,111 0,667 1,000 0,111 0,111 0,000 0,778 0,000 0,111 0,222 0,333 0,333 0,778 0,667
C4
0,024 0,359 0,005 1,000 0,062 0,000 0,665 0,029 0,105 0,048 0,282 0,254 0,732 0,617
D1
0,410 0,858 0,007 0,097 1,000 0,060 0,284 0,149 0,209 0,045 0,060 0,052 0,560 0,276
D2
0,700 0,900 0,000 0,000 0,800 1,000 0,100 0,100 0,200 0,000 0,100 0,000 0,100 0,000
D3
0,025 0,520 0,029 0,570 0,156 0,004 1,000 0,037 0,156 0,061 0,291 0,270 0,734 0,553
E1
0,400 0,633 0,000 0,200 0,667 0,033 0,300 1,000 0,967 0,033 0,100 0,067 0,833 0,567
E2
0,217 0,700 0,017 0,367 0,467 0,033 0,633 0,483 1,000 0,083 0,300 0,267 0,817 0,567
E3
0,067 1,000 0,133 0,667 0,400 0,000 1,000 0,067 0,333 1,000 0,533 0,533 0,800 0,600
F1
0,054 0,393 0,027 0,527 0,071 0,009 0,634 0,027 0,161 0,071 1,000 0,875 0,929 0,625
F2
0,028 0,349 0,028 0,500 0,066 0,000 0,623 0,019 0,151 0,075 0,925 1,000 0,943 0,585
F3
0,090 0,355 0,020 0,442 0,217 0,003 0,517 0,072 0,142 0,035 0,301 0,289 1,000 0,584
H
0,073 0,296 0,023 0,496 0,142 0,000 0,519 0,065 0,131 0,035 0,269 0,238 0,777 1,000
In Table 3, it is possible to verify the different similarity degrees between different classes of
certification. The closer the values are to 1, the higher is the level of composed certifications.
In order to a more accurate analysis it was applied generating clusters method.
3.2. Certifications Cluster
In this study, data were classified by using information from the standardized data. To
perform the hierarchical analysis of clusters generation, it was chosen Euclidean distance with
subsequent application of the Ward method, due to the quantitative analysis. The Figure 1
presents the aeronautical maintenance homologation certificates cluster dendrogram by
pattern.
When the clusters are observed, it can be verified that in the first cluster, from left to right, the
E3 pattern (Helicopter Rotors) is in an isolated branch, situation justified by its specificity.
Still in the first cluster, the “D3” patterns (turbine engines) and “F3” (aircraft mechanical,
electrical and electronic accessories) are in the same branch, which is also justified as the
turbine engines have a large quantity of accessories that also need specific maintenance. The
“D3-F3” pattern branches are associated to the “C4-H” pattern branches (“C4” related to
metallic structure aircrafts, with maximum takeoff approved weight above 5670 kg (airplane)
or 2730 kg (helicopters) and “H” being related to specific maintenance in activities
execution). This makes sense as larger aircrafts are the ones that commonly have turbine
engines.
In the second cluster, it can be observed that the “C3” pattern (combined structure aircraft,
with maximum takeoff approved weight above 5670 kg (airplane) or 2730 kg (helicopters))
are in a specific branch, clustered, however, with “F1 and F2” patterns (aircraft
communication/navigation equipments and aircraft instruments, respectively). Taking into

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account that combined structure aircraft are, normally, more modern and also that more
modern aircraft are the ones which have more communication/navigation equipments and
instruments, that agglomeration in the second cluster is coherent.
Figure 1. Certifications cluster dendrogram
In the third cluster, it is possible to identify a certification cluster for propellers maintenance
certifications (“E1 and E2”), which is justifiable by itself. In the fourth cluster, are
concentrated companies certifications that perform maintenance in conventional engines, “D1
and D2” pattern, along with “C1 and C2” patterns, associated to modifications and repairs of
smaller aircrafts cells, which consequently use, generally, conventional engines. This
analysis, from the dendrogram, enabled to find out that the aeronautical maintenance
companies are trying to certify themselves into groups and maintenance classes patterns that
will possibly increase their services scope for certain types of aircraft.
4. Final Considerations and Further Research
This study sought to bring this aircraft maintenance subject into scientific discussion, and
from primary data collected, to evaluate aircraft maintenance companies in terms of technical
distribution and also to study the information about the companies’ certification type, that
also exposes their technical training. This work shows a snapshot of the current maintenance
and reveals an area with potential for significant growth driven by expected growth in the
Brazilian air transportation. The data here presented, represent a case study of Brazilian
aircraft maintenance industry, consequently it is a descriptive approach with no pretension of
generalization for the aircraft maintenance situation as a whole. However, we recommended
that there are some points that can be discussed from the analysis in this work. Considering
that specialization and technology training required to perform “D” and “F” services are
4 segments

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significantly higher than those required to perform “C” services, Is it right to assure that other
industries have technologically lagged behind Brazilian aircraft maintenance industry? Does
the volume service for “C” pattern surpass those demanded by the “D” and “F” services? The
second point to be explored, regards to combined certification that have different patterns. Is
that a usual practice in international aircraft maintenance scenario? What is the boundary in
which composed certifications could affect the development of technical competences
required from each pattern? Thus, it is necessary a better verification on developed practices
in this sector and the observation about how the actors in this scenario are enabling
themselves organizationally and technically, considering the great importance of the subject.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by CAPES.
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