Certain Planes.....Certain Planes!!

There are times in this industry when it seems that certain airplanes are out to get ya. They come back for the same issue, time and time again. Recently I worked a plane with an EGT issue. The older 737-300s have EGT systems that are very reliable but when a small part of that system goes bad it will throw the whole thing into a spiraling mess.

Nice SAFE pic of one of our planes.

A plane came in with a gauge going blank. A quick check of the history showed that the gauge had already been replaced (twice) as well as the other common culprit (a cannon plug in the engine core). Long story short I left that night and the plane was still broken. Fast forward to the next morning and I'm assigned that plane again. The guys at night meggered the wires ( a time consuming job) and found no faults. The boss was on the line with Boeing and they were busy trying to find a particular grounding post to verify it's security. Before they could get back with us the guy I was working with, let's call him Mr. Baseball, had found the post and together we verified the security of the set up. We ran the plane and all was well so we did our paperwork and let her free.

That plane didn't leave until later in the day and when it was brought to the gate the other EGT gauge was blanking out! We got that one sorted out and away she went, after another gate call about a circuit breaker.

Don't ya miss the old simple days

A week late I got a call for a seat belt or something small and finished it up, headed back to the shop. As soon as I sit down the crew calls back for something else. I fix that and head out again. I almost make it to the shop when they call me back for a third time about a leak or something like that. This time it hits me it's that same plane I spent two days with a week ago!

To cap it all off about four days later I was working some graveyard overtime. I was doing the usual talking and gossiping for the first half hour when I decided I had better check what I was working on for the night. I'm sure by now you have figured out that I was assigned that same plane! Wow. All I can say is that particular plane is soon to be retired so the stalking will soon end.

Another Week Another Learning Experience

A plane was grounded when I got to work a couple of weeks ago. Not that unusual. What was unusual was the issue with the plane. this plane needed a stab trim cable replaced. We, in Oakland, have no experience with this type of job and in fact it is really considered a hangar job.

Another mechanic, Dr. was also starting his work week and we decided to work the plane since he, like me, enjoys doing jobs that we have never done before. There was a crew coming in from Phoenix to change out the cable but they were not going to arrive until around 11pm.

After checking the paperwork Dr. and I decided that there was plenty we could do while waiting for the Phoenix guys. Since I have a vast experience doing Cabin work (thanks Delta) I went inside and started to take apart the interior. What we had to do was to expose the Idler Pulleys in the system so that the new cable could be routed.

I took out the seats in the over wing area and pulled up the carpet and removed the floor panel and what do ya know...there were the pulleys.

Dr. in the mean time pulled the ceiling out of the bag bins to access more idler pulleys.

The Phoenix guys arrived and brought all those cool special tools that those hangar guys have. The best thing was that "the" cable guy came out with them. This guy, I'll call him The Cable Whisperer, pretty much only does cable and rigging jobs back in Phoenix.

Long story short we learned that changing those cables is not as scary as it first sounds. We learned a lot of tricks. We learned that a guy who has been working at this company for over 30 years can work circles around us!

One of the best parts of the job was when almost the entire roster of Day shift came out the next morning to help us out. Dr. and I had to leave but those guys closed up the plane and she is on her way making us money as we speak.

The Birds!!!!

I was thinking of all the interesting things that Line Mechanics do. We go on road trips and work on engine issues and have the pleasure of working in the sun, rain, and snow. We change windows, tires, APUs, and the like. We change vomit covered seatbelts and broken coffee makers. And I thought to myself that I have likely mentioned most of these things in my past blogs. One of the more interesting things we do that I have not mentioned is BIRD STRIKES.

Recently the bird strike activity of the airlines has come into public focus with the US Air emergency landing into the Hudson River by Capt. Sully. That was an amazing bit of flying and an unusual result of the bird strikes that we encounter as Line Mechanics.

Strike on a Kruger Flap

Working the Line for the last 15 years I must have worked on or been involved with hundreds of bird strikes. That may surprise some people but it happens every week. For the most part when we go out to a call about a bird strike we simply do a "Bird Strike Inspection", do some clean up and the plane is on its merry way. There have been some unusual ones that I have been involved in that cause damage but the vast majority of the bird strikes do no damage at all.

Because of the recent publicity of the bird strikes, however, we must now collect a sample of the bird (a feather or chunk of meat) bag it up in this neat little "Bird Strike Kit" that we now stock and sent it to the Smithsonian Institute in D.C. In D.C. they can tell from the sample what type of bird we killed and I guess that must be fed into some kind of super computer somewhere which tells them.....I have no idea what.

I once went to a terminating plane. It was night time and I did my usual walk around before going up to talk to the pilots. On the walk around I counted 26 bird strikes! I went up to the flight deck and I asked the crew if they were aiming for the damn things! They said they were on approach to land and a whole flock of tiny birds took off right in front of them. The Captain said it sounded like machine gun fire was hitting them. They Midnight shift guy did the inspection and found no damage.

One time while doing a walk around, again at night, I came around to the nose of the plane and the radome was caved in like someone punched a car door only larger. The crew told me a pterodactyl hit them (that's how big the thing was). Again we did the inspection R/R'd the radome and that was that.

Those instances and many more were before we had to mail evidence of the birds to D.C. Since then there were two interesting bird strikes that I was involved in. The first was a call from an F.O. He was doing his walk around and said there was a bird strike on the left gear. Me and another guy I'll call GrassHopper went out to see what was up. Once there I could not believe it: there wrapped around the still hot brake was an entire turkey vulture!

 Usually we only see some blood, feathers and maybe a couple of chunks of meat but this thing was complete! As a matter of fact the hot brake had cooked some of the bird! We unwrapped it and did our inspection (no damage) and then got to thinking. Most of you know that when mechanic get to thinking the result is not going to be good

. Since there was no management there at the time and the whole "Bird Strike Kit" thing was not put together yet, all we had to go on was a letter that stated we were to keep a sample of the bird to sent to D.C. GrassHopper and I thought 'we can do better than that, we can send them the whole damn bird!" We got a trash bag, put the bird in and stuck it in the freezer in the shop. I then copied the log page and wrote a letter to the manager and left both on his desk. I never did hear anything about it and I never saw the bird again.

The latest large bird strike I was involved in was what I ended up calling "Bird -Ageddon". This thing was a mess but at first it was decieving. This plane was again a terminator. When I was walking around her I noticed some feathers sticking to the left forward wing-to-body fairing and some blood streaked aft of there. There was nothing in the engine, nothing on the gear, nothing on the tail leading edges. I went up to talk to the crew and they told me they saw the thing, it was pretty big, they tried to miss it but then heard the thump. As a matter of fact the passengers and the Flight Attendants heard it too.

After the crew left I went back down and started to look the hit over. The bird hit on the leading edge of a seam between two panels. I pulled the feathers out and could see that the panels were damaged. The holes that once had screws in them had been torn and the screws were missing all along the seam. I called the Foreman and asked him to bring the camera so he could take a picture of the panel and sent it to MX Control. My buddy Brika-Brack came over and we were looking over the damage. I told him "I have a funny feeling that bird is back behind that panel". He was not sure but he helped me to take the panel off. As soon as we got the panel off I called the Foreman (and his camera) back. Just as I thought the bird hit that seam, it deformed, the bird went inside, and then the panel popped back into place.

 Inside that panel was like a bomb went off. There were bird parts and blood everywhere. The bird hit so hard it actually bent the box structure that comprised part of the kruger flap compartment. The bird continued in two pieces up over the wing and down under the wing in the spaces left by the wing-to-body fairings. The Foreman was quite impressed, he said it looked like the bird exploded in there and that is a real good description of it. That plane was down for something like 5-6 days while they figured out how to clean/repair all the damage!

That was certainly the messiest bird strike I have been involved with others are just strange. Any Line Mechanic will tell you about bird strikes that leave no evidence except a perfect impression of the animal on the plane. It's like a ghostly imprint. You can make out the head, beak, feathers, feet, some times even the eye, but there is no blood or damage. I have heard of bird strikes that go through the radome, through the forward bulkhead and into the flight deck-spraying the pilots with blood! At Delta we had one the hit the side of the plane, on a seam I assume, made its way into the fuselage, past the sidewall and sprayed the passengers!

Those last two are very rare. As a matter of fact any damage resulting from birds is rare. Bird strikes, however, are NOT rare and as a Line Mechanic it's just another in a long list of "interesting" calls you will contend with. The other thing about birds is that they seem to find their way into the engines. As with Capt. Sully's plane this can cause the engine to flame out, damage blades, etc. This is also pretty rare and while there is a special inspection for birds that go into the engine most of the time the planes are good to keep flying.

One Of Those Days

As an aircraft mechanic we all know that it is coming. The it can be several different things. For some guys the it is having to work with a certain mechanic or foreman. For others the it maybe a road trip, still others may have their it in the form of a check plane with an MEL on it. The list goes on and on. For me that it changes from time to time and situation to situation.

Also as a profesional aircraft mechanic I realize that the it is going to come and I like to think that I am mature enough to accept it when it happens. We all know guys who whine about the work that they get assigned and know how frustrating it is to deal with those guys. As a person who has moonlighted in the foreman slot I know all too well that dealing with those people is not a pleasant experience. That said we as profesional mechanics have to realize that guys have good days and bad days, and some of us are not good at leaving all that home stuff at home. I personally try not to complain about the hand that is dealt me (although I know that I have before) and I can understand that if a guy has to change an HMU one night he may complain if he comes in on OT and gets assigned another HMU.

Unlike other jobs where if things are not going well we often cannot simply put something down or aside and work on another thing. There is not going to be any closing of the spreadsheet or going down the hall to visit a co-worker. Our job is a results based job and like it or not a time based one as well. So my main it, the thing that drives me the most crazy is working on a plane all day and leaving it broke, having made very little headway. So here is what happened:

Day shift, about 10am I head out to a gate call for Leading Edge Slats not retracting upon landing. As I roll up on the plane, sure enough the slats are out. When I talk to the crew they are in a good mood (which always helps) they inform me that this is a repeat write-up from yesterday and sure enough the leading edge B system pressure hydraulic fuse was replaced for the same problem just the night before. I tell the OPS guy not to board and go check out this fuse. I'm looking around, as you guys know there are a few hyd fuses in the wheel well and I have no idea which does what. Up on the ceiling there is one fuse that is clean (this is an old work dog 300) so I figure thats the one. The lead calls MX Control and gets no help from them really so I checked the Auto-Slat box on her advice to make sure the problem was not in that system, no joy.

As I start up the jetway the Captain stops me to ask if the plane is good to go-"nope". As I get into the jetway the FO asks me if the plane is good to go-"nope". As I turn into the cockpit the Flight Attendants ask me if the plane is good to go-"nope". As I leave the cockpit the OPS Sup asks me if the plane is good to go and thats when I had had enough and asked them all if they thought I would keep the status of the plane a secret from them. I mean why not let me work and get back to them when I was ready? I know, I know-thats a subject for another post.

Turns out I had the right fuse so I back off the B nut drain the one side of the thing, back off the B nut on the other side and get a face full of Hyd fluid. Luckily just moments before the Lead asked me why I was not wearing safety glasses so I threw them on. The glasses deflected the majority of the fluid but could not stop the stuff dripping off my forehead and right into my eye. I got a good bit in mouth as well and as it turned out that was only the first time of many that day in which the taste of hyd fluid would be in my mouth.

Once the fuse was reattached the slats worked fine except (you knew that was coming) one end of the fuse now had a leak. I tried to tighten the B nut but it did not help, I took it off again and cleaned the B nut out but that did not help so we ordered a new fuse. Well as it is a fuse does not typically shut unless there is a leak so I put everything back together, hung my bucket on the dripping line and we ran the Flaps/Slats a bunch of times to find the leak. Not too long into this I found #2 Slat actuator leaking. Cool, I'm thinking, at least now I'm getting some where. The Lead checks it out and of course we have neither the Actuator or the Fuse! Since the actuator had to come out I started to take off all the panels and such to gain access. Anyone who has done this before knows that there are about two hundred screws, four or five access panels a bunch of bolts and a few nuts to deal with. After that it was wit til 4pm for the parts.

Fast forward to 4pm I grabbed the fuse and installed it first. I figured it was the quickest. Another couple of drops of hyd fluid in the mouth/hair/eyes and it was time for a leak check. Guess what? That SOB was still leaking! I took off the line that the fuse connected to and the flair was cracked! Now I need a line! I can't use a temp line because this line snakes in between the Aileron mixer, two cables, and two rods. When I called AOG they told me that the line was NIS (Not In Stock) system wide and that they would have to call Boeing! Well now it's about 5 or 5:30. It's Saturday we only had four guys on shift and Terminators were in range so I had to stop and help with that. Actually I was not even supposed to be working that plane since we only had four guys covering the line but the guys were cool and let me break off here and there to work it.

When I left the plane to a guy working RON I had accomplished zero. As a matter of fact we were worse off than when we started since we needed a line that nobody had! Before I gave up completely I did put the old line back in, and hung my bucket from it again so the RON guy could change and leak check the #2 actuator. Kind of sucks but hey he was on OT.....