What type of maintenance is performed at the depot level?

Depots are specialized facilities designed to handle extensive maintenance tasks, including overhauling and modifying aircraft to ensure they meet operational standards and can accommodate upgrades. This type of maintenance often involves comprehensive inspections, disassembly of aircraft components, repairs, and updates, which require significant resources and expertise that are typically not available at lower levels of maintenance.

Routine inspections and flight readiness checks are essential but are usually performed at lower operational levels, such as the organizational or intermediate level. Immediate repairs focus on fixing faults that need quick resolutions to avoid downtime, which is generally manageable at those same lower levels rather than at a depot. Thus, depot-level maintenance primarily focuses on the in-depth, thorough work needed to overhaul and modify aircraft for enhanced performance and longevity.