Mark Thomas
Head of Aircraft Engineering
Biography
Head of Aircraft Engineering – British Antarctic Survey
(Twin Otter/Dash 7) 2010 – Present
Engineering Manager – TNT Airways
(Airbus A300/BAe146 Fleet) March 2009 – March 2010
Engineering Superintendent – TNT Airways
(Airbus A300/BAe146 Fleet) May 2008 – March 2009
Fleet Development Engineer – TNT Airways
(Airbus A300/BAe146 Fleet) June 2007 – June 2008 (1 year 1 month)
Boeing Fleet Engineer – SR Technics
(easyJet 737 Fleet/Gulf Air 767 Fleet/Private 747) 2005 – 2007 (2 years)
Technical Services Engineer – KLM uk engineering (ATR/Fokker/BAe146/Boeing 737) June 1990 – June 2005 (15 years 1 month)
Aircraft Mechanic – Airframe – Royal Air Force
(Sepecat Jaguar) August 1985 – June 1991 (5 years 11 months)
2017
Air unit awarded prestigious aviation award
News 11 August, 2017
2015
Rothera Air Facility
Facility
Twin Otter aircraft
Facility
Main Purpose of Job
Responsible to the Head of Air Unit for the safe and efficient maintenance and continued airworthiness of BAS aircraft, including control, review, amendment and implementation of BAS Aircraft Maintenance Programmes, and compliance with regulatory authority requirements relating to continued airworthiness.
Key Duties and Responsibilities
- Ensuring that all BAS owned aircraft and their associated equipment are maintained, repaired, overhauled and/or modified in accordance with airworthiness requirements primarily via relevant Maintenance Programme(s).
- Ensuring that all aircraft engineering documents are completed in a manner acceptable to, and compliant with, the requirements of the airworthiness authority of the state of registration
- Ensuring BAS aircraft maintenance programmes are current, complied with, and continuously developed in the light of operational experience, incidents, and aircraft configuration/modification changes, to include developing and incorporating continued airworthiness tasks.
- Assisting with timely recovery and return to service of unserviceable BAS aircraft globally
- Day to day development and supervision of Airworthiness Coordinator
- Acts as technical representative between BAS and maintenance organisations in relation to both line and base maintenance.
- Oversight of contracted maintenance in terms of assessing costs/charges made.
- Fleet reliability trend monitoring, developing corrective actions where possible.
- Assessment of technical data (Airworthiness Directives, Service Bulletins etc., and monitoring of aircraft continued airworthiness requirements.
- Investigation of incident reports from an engineering perspective, and reporting on findings and closure actions.
- Liaison with regulatory authorities and aircraft design holders on airworthiness matters
- Liaison with science community on current and future equipment fit proposals
- Making of safety cases to regulator to support continued operations when necessary where aircraft is operating outside normal parameters.
- Assuring the integrity of the aircraft by effective control of modifications/science fits/role change equipment fits.
- Liaison with maintenance providers to develop and set maintenance requirements.
- Creation, development, updating and issuing of procedures for use within Air Unit and by contracted maintenance organisation, maintaining oversight of compliance with published procedures.
- Liaison with organisations performing maintenance and/or modifications on the BAS Aircraft.
- In conjunction with Airworthiness Coordinator, maintain oversight of the BAS computerized system, CAFAM, for control of maintenance and continued airworthiness of all BAS aircraft, and development to meet BAS needs by consultation with CAFAM developer/owner.
- Ensuring as far as possible that all BAS ground support equipment, special tools and general hangar equipment provided for maintenance organisation use is controlled and maintained in a serviceable condition.
- Maintain oversight of aircraft related spares and consumables indents, modifying to suit recent experience and changing operational needs.