Reliability, Quality Control and Maintenance: Background to the Reliability and Quality Control Philosophy Pursued during Design and Production of the Turbo‐Skyvan and Some Aspects of Maintenance and Servicing Available to Purchase

AN encouraging degree of reliability has been achieved with the prototype Skyvan which to date has flown in excess of 200 hours in development and demonstration. The initial 30 hours were completed in the Mk. 1 piston engined configuration and consisted solely of handling and development flying; the aircraft was then grounded and re‐engined with the Turbomeca Astazou II since when, some 175 hours have been flown in 230 flights, as the Mark 1 A. A reliability assessment of this latter period shows that, using technical delays as the criterion, the aircraft has achieved a 98 per cent flight regularity, and the premature removal rate of system components has been commendably low for development flying.