When you think of a pit-stop, thoughts of Formula One teams frantically trying to shave a hundredth of a second off the time it takes to put fresh tyres on a racing car come to mind.
The skill and efficiency of the mechanics can be make or break for the likes of Lewis Hamilton. But feats of tyre-wielding wonder are not restricted just to race tracks - as shown by the Emirates Engineering unit in Dubai.
The team has been successful in its first complete replacement of landing gear on an Airbus A380 - whereby all 22 wheels were removed and replaced at one time.
The superjumbo has five sets of landing gear - two under the wings, two under the body and one at the nose. In addition to the wheels, the landing gear mechanism of the aircraft includes the gear extension and retraction systems, braking and steering controls, and other monitoring systems.
The landing gear of the world’s largest commercial aircraft can support a weight of close to 570 tonnes on take-off and over 390 tonnes on landing.
Emirates Engineering spent 14 days replacing the landing gear on A6-EDF, during which the aircraft was lifted on to jacks.
"This and other similar achievements by the Emirates Engineering team reflects the degree of planning, preparation and expertise that go behind the successful execution of complex projects such as this one,” said Mohammad Jaffar Nasser, Emirates senior vice president, engineering maintenance.
The same task is set to be carried out on two further Emirates A380s this year.
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