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The accident happened in August 2012 and broke the wing of the Boeing 777-200 passenger jet. While taxiing at Shanghai's Pudong airport, its wingtip hit the tail of another aircraft.

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What action need to be taken towards this kind of damage?

What manual is used as reference for this repair or replacement?

(Is it Structure Repair Manual or Aircraft Maintenance Manual)

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    $\begingroup$ 9M-MRO - the aircraft that flew MH370 $\endgroup$
    – Ben
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 8:56
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    $\begingroup$ I was just pointing out that the exact aircraft in the photo was repaired, went back to flying, and a few years later went missing as MH370. $\endgroup$
    – Ben
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 9:38
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    $\begingroup$ @cat You seems to be confusing flight number and tail number, there's a difference. $\endgroup$
    – Notts90
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 13:06
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    $\begingroup$ @cat you might want to ask as a separate question, but essentially a tail number is unique to an aircraft in the same way a license plate is unique to a car/bus (registration number in U.K.). The flight number is specific to the flight being flown, i.e. the 0845 flight from London Heathrow to JFK would have a specific number regardless of the actual aircraft flying it, it’s roughly the equivalent of a bus route number. $\endgroup$
    – Notts90
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 15:46
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    $\begingroup$ I'm pretty sure they can replace a whole piece of wing. $\endgroup$
    – Manu H
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 18:08

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What action need to be taken towards this kind of damage?

The aircraft will be grounded immediately and damage like this needs to be repaired in a timely fashion to get the plane back in the air and making money once again. Its worth noting as well (under FAA regulations) that you would also be in breach of § 23.1385 Position light system installation as the position lights are usually installed in the wing tip.

For damage like this Boeings AOG team will be brought in to repair it

The Boeing team isn’t called in for everything. Airlines have incidents every day, Testin says, and most airport ground crews can handle routine repairs—a window cracked by a bird, a component failing calibration. An AOG intervention is required for the big things: an airplane off the end of a runway, landing gear accidentally retracted, a flaming tail drag, two 150-ton behemoths kissing wingtips on the ramp.

Since it's Boeing themselves coming in, they may use a variety of reference material to fix the damage and it really will vary case by case depending on what needs to be replaced. In this case the damaged metal will be removed until they get to an area at which they can begin to joint on a new wing tip.

I cant find any great examples of wing repair being done on jumbos as its most likely done behind closed doors but here is a great video of it being done to a small aircraft generally speaking the fundamentals are the same as the designs only change in size. Remove the damaged skin, get the wing down to the ribs/spars, repair/replace ribs if necessary, re-skin wing.

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    $\begingroup$ There's a National Geographic TV episode that follows Boeing's team doing a repair of an aft pressure bulkhead on a 767. While it's obviously not the same situation as repairing the specific damage here, watching it would give you an idea of how these types of repairs are carried out. $\endgroup$
    – Zach Lipton
    Commented Apr 21, 2018 at 0:45

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