Work Stories from an Airline Mechanic

via Reddit by chiselplow
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“Rampers did not load the cargo correctly, it shifted in flight and crushed the carrier, killing the dog. We’re installing permanent steel cages to prevent this from happening again, but I’ve seen rampers break 3/8″ steel cages before, so I wouldn’t trust them to not do it again.”

“Poor bunny. We were performing an engine run to check for leaks and he ran out right in front. There was nothing recognizable as bone. Just fur and red paste. The engine was fine though.”

“I guess he had a rough landing.”

“Oops.
It’s cheaper to pump cold/hot air into a plane than to run it’s own air conditioning system, so they have external connection points to hook up a big hose to. I did not see that big hose and closed up all the doors, causing to plane to pressurize, on the ground, with no one inside. I came back a few minutes later because I forgot my hat inside and found the door was really hard to open. I got it to open, and the blast of air pushed the door into me while I was standing on a ladder, nearly knocking me off. I was definitely high enough to get seriously hurt if I fell, but I was lucky enough that I didn’t.”

“I was working with a trainer who was showing me how to change a tire. I was looking through the paperwork and saw that when we pulled off the old tire, we were missing a washer. I brought it to the attention of the trainer and he asked me what we should do about it. I said I’d go order it from parts. Turns out we didn’t have it and we couldn’t get it for 4 hours. Went back to my trainer and told him the bad news. He told me to take the aircraft out of service and inform the flight crew and maintenance control. They were pretty pissed off, but hey, not my fault we didn’t have the part.

The plane would’ve been totally fine flying without that tiny 1/4″ washer, but I still stand by my decision.”

“We have to do a few inspections on a strut that is sitting too low, because we don’t know how long it was low, so there could be damage that’s not obvious. I guess he expected us to just saunter on over there, give it a quick look and say “Looks good from here.” He tried to change his mind and say that he didn’t mean to call us out, but once you call maintenance, you’ve given up control of that aircraft and I’m not going to release one with a suspected problem.”

“The fastest way to get promoted is to f*** something up.

Our doors moved at a blistering 5 feet per minute, so it’s not like she couldn’t see that it was going to hit the plane. The whole incident was on camera and she got suspended for a week while management investigated. After she came back she applied to become a lead and got the job.”

“Emergency pressure dumps are fun because if there’s enough moisture in the air it will snow inside the aircraft. They also hurt like hell too.

We have to pressurize the aircraft and then release all of it in about a second or so. We asked the flight crew to leave because it fucking hurts to go from -6000 ft to 0ft that fast. They argued that they could take it, so we let them stay. So we go ahead and dump the pressure and the captain looks at us, tears in his eyes, and says “Next time you ask me to get off the plane, I’m listening.””

“Gotta make sure terrorists can’t break down the door. We had a new guy sprint into the door and try to break it down. The door won.”

“The ramp gets pretty chaotic and people have a tendency to run into things. Sometimes it happens to be a plane.”

“Some of the damage we get told to inspect is so small, I can’t help but think that the person who wrote it up, was the one who caused it. If I can’t see it while deliberately looking for it, I don’t believe for a second that you saw it while just walking by.”

“Emergency equipment is pretty tightly controlled so that, you know, it actually works during an emergency. The emergency lights on the plane are powered by a separate battery and it needs to be changed if they lights are on for more than a few minutes. We don’t always have power on the plane, and the cleaners aren’t allowed to touch anything in the cockpit, so they’re supposed to bring lights to clean in the dark if they have to. I found out that the cabin cleaners were using those lights to see instead of bringing their own flashlights.”

“This could’ve been a major fuckup. This particular aircraft will top over onto it’s wing if there’s too much fuel in one side. When you’re running the APU (Refer to pt1 for acronym) it only draws fuel from the right wing. We had it running for a pretty long time and when we actually checked the fuel, we were only a few minutes away from tipping over. With almost every other aircraft out there, the plane will just pump over the fuel on its own so that you don’t even have to watch it. Not this one.”

“This incident was in the news when it happened. The TSA inconveniences everyone, not just passengers. We have to keep our aircraft secure so that no one can sneak on board and mess with anything. So TSA likes to run these little games where they try to get on board in ways they shouldn’t be able to. This guy climbed all over every plane we had parked, using the pitot probes as hand and foot holds. Once he got on top of the fuselage he slid down onto the jetbridge and was able to get inside. Now, a pitot probe is a delicate instrument that’s very critical to safe flight and this guy put all of his weight onto them. We had to cancel all of our flights so we could inspect all of the probes. We found that almost all of them had damage and had to be replaced.
Here’s a pic of a pitot probe http://imgur.com/SpSigng ”

“Seriously, they have nothing better to do than try to hand out fines. If someone without security clearance made it onto the airport, that’s a failure of your system, no fault of mine. I have more important things to worry about other than getting a $10,000 ticket because I didn’t see 1 person hiding a badge in a crowd of people.

They’ve even dressed up as janitors and walked into our offices with cleaning supplies, only to reveal that they’re actually TSA agents who were hiding their badge, and then they try to fine everyone in the building for not stopping them.”

“They did not describe how bad the leak was and it took me by surprise. The shutoff valve was pretty far away and it took my a little while to find it because it was behind a bunch of stuff I had to move. Just about emptied the entire water tank onto the floor.”

“They started breeding in some puddles that formed underneath the floor and survived for who knows how long. The write up said that passengers were complaining about a swarm of mosquitos in the back of the plane. We called Orkin to deal with them and it was pretty weird escorting an exterminator through security. The police didn’t really like it and searched the van two or three times before finally letting them go.”

Aircraft Mechanic Work Stories

“This was and still is the absolute worst job I’ve ever worked. Most aircraft use a system that’s pretty much a tank of “blue juice” and an agitator to stir the stew and the blue juice needs to be removed and replaced with fresh juice. Sometimes the lav tech forgets that his pump is on, and the juice has nowhere to go but up. There was a wall 1.5″ high of blue juice all the way from the lav to the cockpit. It took almost a week to repair all the damage.”

“The amount of paperwork an aircraft generates is utterly insane. If I have to change a light bulb, I have to fill out around 10-15 pages of paperwork. It’s mainly just signatures though, so a stamp helps a ton.”

“This took forever because the company that manufactured that particular style of seat calls the part that I needed an “Escutcheon Assembly” instead of just calling it a latch.”

“This was a fun job to work because the plane was full of passengers and both pilots were watching us. APU stands for Auxiliary power unit and it is a small jet engine that runs a generator and provides bleed air for engine starting/air conditioning. The pilots called us and said that the APU generator was not providing any electrical power so when we got there we attempted to restart the APU to recreate the fault. I flipped the knob to “Start” and every single warning bell and alarm went off all at once. The plane kept screaming at us for a few seconds and then we lost all electrical power on the aircraft, with passengers on board. It’s against the regulations to have passengers on board an aircraft without any lights on, so we had to deboard everyone using the emergency lights. We performed and electrical restart of the aircraft, and restarted the APU and the generator came back online and passed all the tests we could throw at it so we cleared the discrepancy. The flight crew absolutely did not want to fly the aircraft after watching that scene though, but we couldn’t find anymore issues, so they ended up complaining to their boss and he switched out the crew. Have never seen a plane do anything like that since.”

“You would be surprised at the amount of things that are FAA and manufacturer approved temporary repairs that involve speed tape. Hole in the wing? Speed tape. Missing screws? Speed tape. Access panel won’t stay closed? Speed tape. In all seriousness, speed tape is some really strong shit. It costs like $700 a roll and beats out duct tape in every way. You could stick one end onto the hood of your car and use the other end to pull it.”

“Really fun doing this while passengers are on board. They like to take videos and pictures of the guy that’s fixing the plane with tape. Again, all these things done with tape are FAA and manufacturer approved.”

“Pencil whipping something means that you signed off the work as complete, when you didn’t actually do shit. This scumbag was known for doing this and he didn’t feel like changing a brake that was worn out. Luckily it caught my eye when I was working near it and I informed my lead. It was very close to the end of the shift when I noticed it, so the guy who whipped it had already packed up and left for the day. The supervisor of the shift decided that the aircraft was to remain parked until he came back from his weekend so that he would be the one who changed it and not someone else. He ended up getting suspended after he changed the brake. I can never understand how someone could sleep at night knowing that they whipped something on an aircraft that is going to carry hundreds of people ever day, possible friends and family.”