The National Audit Office has called for the National Airborne Service Corps (NASC) to improve its maintenance procedures after 37.5 percent of its aircraft failed readiness goals.
The low level of maintenance in the nation’s air rescue and survey corps might impede its ability to conduct daily missions, the office said in a report included as part of the government’s general budget.
The corps has a fleet of 24 aircraft — nine Eurocopter AS365 Dauphins, 14 Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawks, and one fixed-wing Beechcraft Model 200 — and aims to achieve a readiness rate of 65 percent for each aircraft, the office said.
Photo copied by Ou Su-mei, Taipei Times
However, the Ministry of the Interior does not have the maintenance capability required, the office said, adding that fleet-wide maintenance checks and repairs had not been conducted.
Last year, the Dauphins achieved an overall readiness of 69.45 percent, but their readiness has declined yearly from a high of 79.45 percent in 2018, it said.
For example, over a 90-day period, the three Dauphins assigned to the Kaohsiung unit achieved a readiness rate of 50 percent on 55 of the days, it said.
Five of the Black Hawks, or 35 percent of the fleet, failed to achieve the readiness goal, with the worst Black Hawk logging a readiness rate of only 31.51 percent, it said.
Over the past three years, four of the five Black Hawks, as well as the Beechcraft, have consistently failed to meet maintenance standards, it added.
Asked for comment on Saturday, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) said that a readiness rate of 65 percent was the bare minimum required for the corps to function.
“Readiness rates should be much higher than that or safety issues can occur,” he said. “The statistics showed that aircraft parts were not being replaced fast enough to keep up with their missions, which endangers the crews.”
The ministry must evaluate whether the problems stemmed from a lack of personnel, inefficiencies in the logistics system or a lack of spare parts, he said.
The low readiness rate on some aircraft might stem from the corps cannibalizing them for parts so that they can repair other aircraft, a practice that could increase the risk of mechanical failure, he said.
DPP Legislator Tsai Shih-ying (蔡適應) said that readiness rates are crucial to operational effectiveness and all agencies agreed that the standard of 65 percent was the lowest acceptable figure.
The army and the air force also use Black Hawks on search-and-rescue missions, and increasing cooperation and resource sharing between the corps and the military could potentially reduce the strain on the corps’ fleet, he said.
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