On Aircraft Maintenance in Hangar 11

At Schiphol-East lies Hangar 11, where... airplane maintenance and repairs are carried out. Aircrafts in need of technical repairs are ferried into the hangar. Is engine 2 open? We need to look at the cables and wires in there... Jan-Willem Klaver, 35 years old, ground maintenance engineer. With KLM since 1999. Jan-Willem is part of a special team... created to fix complaints and minor repairs. Here on the engine you can see the fireloop, with which there is a problem. We will have to troubleshoot in order to find out what the problem is. First we check out all the cables, wires and connections to the fireloop itself, to make sure it is all okay. After a minor reparation and a thorough inspection... the aircraft was ferried out of the hangar that afternoon. The same morning, a Boeing 747 cargo plane was brought in... for inspection due to vibrations in one of the engines. The plane is thoroughly tested. We are going to test the engines momentarily. Of course that is never done inside due to jet blast. Testing is done outside on the platform, because the force of the jet blast out of the engines is enormous. We are also watching for stalling of the engines. This means that the engine demands more air than it can take in. I just checked for leakage but there isn't any, so that is okay. After inspection the airplane is ready... to be put safely in operation again. What makes this job fun for me is that in maintenance and technique... there is nothing as advanced as the technique used in the 777, or the Airbus A330. It is fun to fix something that needs fixing, so the airplane can continue to fly. In the end, that is what it's all about.