The Library Shelf

In view of the continued expansion of civil air operations, it is perhaps surprising that few comprehensive textbooks dealing with airline maintenance practice have been published in recent years. This can probably be attributed to three factors, of which the first is the complexity of modern airliners and the wide range of engineering knowledge required for their satisfactory maintenance. This renders it difficult to compress an adequate amount of information into a volume of reasonable size which will sell at a price within the purchasing power of maintenance engineers, airline inspectors and students. Another fact which is bound to inhibit potential writers of such textbooks is the plethora of literature of a mandatory nature, such as Manufacturers' Service and Instruction Manuals and the publications of the airworthiness authorities, with which it would serve no useful purpose for a textbook to compete. Lastly the pace of aeronautical development inevitably limits the duration of usefulness of maintenance instructions so that they must be continuously revised if they are not to date as noticeably as a last year's creation by M. Dior.