Following a successful three-month trial, LATAM Airlines Group has decided to use Donecle drones at its São Carlos base maintenance site for visual inspections during heavy checks.
The drone, which does not require a pilot thanks to laser positioning, can automatically scan a narrowbody in less than one hour. LATAM and Donecle are now looking for opportunities to use drones at other sites and for other tasks.
Donecle CEO Josselin Bequet says some regulated inspection tasks will still have to be duplicated by manual inspections until regulators accept drone inspections as valid by themselves.
But other types of drone inspections, such as paint and gloss evaluation and placard checks, can be done by Donecle drones with no manual duplication. Donecle is working closely with airframe OEMs and regulators to provide a Drone solution with the widest range of applications.
LATAM is the first Latin airline to use Donecle drones. But Austrian Airlines has been using them since early 2019 to increase maintenance efficiency in Vienna. With Austrian, Donecle has extended its capabilities beyond narrowbodies to include automated inspection of Embraer E-Jets.
Donecle has also conducted tests with several Lufthansa Technik entities. Austrian currently spearheads the Lufthansa Group’s drone inspection efforts.
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