Aircraft Maintenance and Old Age

I know it's been a long time since I've posted (almost a  year!) but I had to get over this whole "Corporate Security" thing. Those of you who are or who know aircraft mechanics know that we can hold a grudge for quite a while! I'm going to continue on every now and then, more stories, more cool tools, etc.

This post is about getting old. It's something that we all have to face and for a lot of us it hits pretty hard and pretty quick. In the early days of my career I did Airline Overhaul. I was crawling around structures, getting into tight corners, lifting heavy-odd shaped things like aircraft lavs, climbing into fuel tanks, laying on aircraft ribs and stringers, grinding all matter of metals and corrosion, you get the picture. Back in the day I was able to do those things and hop right up, walk away, no pain, no aches.

The thought of having to go to work now in my mid 40s and possible climb into a fuel tank is frightening! The little  things are hard these days! Kneeling down to get the bolts off the main tire so we can change it kills my knees. My back puts up a fit when I have to change a flight deck seat. My shoulders scream while I'm changing a position light.

These aches and pains are something all you new up and coming mechs are going to have to look forward to.

The most startling change is the eyes. Back in the day I could read all those tiny tiny tiny wire numbers which are printed on those tiny tiny tiny aircraft wires. I could use a mirror and read those numbers along with those annoying parts data tags on various valves and actuators with no trouble at all. Now part of my Line MX Tool Kit are my reading glasses. Without the help of those suckers I would be in trouble.

I worked with a guy I'll call MDro. MDro was a good mechanic and he was a good supervisor after that. I remember when we would be reading wiring diagrams MDro would wear TWO pairs of reading glasses!

My intent is not to complain about aging but to let you guys know that it gets harder to do this job as you get older. A good friend of mine always say that "it takes a lot of work to make this job look easy". Just know that the work part may not increase but the aches and pain part will.

The Floor is Making Noises!!

There are times when we are at work and we have to make decisions to ground a plane or not ground a plane. We never take these decisions lightly and of course we know that the impact to passengers and schedulers are going to be huge. There are times, however, that require us to ground a plane when we suspect there is no real problem. This is exactly what happened to us last week.

One of the guys got a call for a chat, lets call him-Baby Boy. So Baby Boy goes out and gets into this "discussion" with the on coming Captain and an off going Flight Attendant. The FA says that when she walks down the center aisle by the overwing exit the floor panel makes a popping sound. The captain that is supposed to take this flight out is well known to us mechanics and is a nervous wreck, since he is famous for grounding planes because of the floor placard that shows the pilot seat position I'll call him Capt. Placard.

By the time Baby Boy gets up to the plane the FA has Capt. Placard convinced that there is some structural damage to the floor of this plane. I should mention that the plane is a 737-700. After trying to calm down the captain Baby Boy comes back into the office looking for advice. Since I have worked overhaul I knew that the popping sound the floor panels make are because of foam tape which is put on the panels where they rest on the floor beams. After some time the tape wears through in spots leaving the sticky part of the tape on the panel. When a person steps on it the sticky part makes contact with the floor beam, when that person lifts his/her foot the adhesive lets go of the floor beam and the panel makes a popping sound.

Baby Boy went back to the plane to explain this to Capt. Placard but by now he was sure the floor was about to give way. He stepped on either side of the aisle by where the passengers at seats 12C and 12D would have their feet and sure enough the floor flexed and there was no way to talk him off the ledge at that point.
 

All of us agreed that baby Boy should just ground it and get Capt. Placard a different aircraft. Not being a shy person Baby Boy let Capt. Placard and the FA know that this was not cool and basically a waste of time.

I went out to Tango (where we park our planes away from the terminal) to help Baby Boy pull up the floor panel in question. Since this was an "evolve" aircraft we pulled up the carpet squares and went to work on the floor panel fasteners. Some of them were stripped (of course) so we drilled out about four of the about 50 screws and pulled the panel back. Normally to get that panel up you would have to take off about six or seven rows of seats. We tried something new and were able to pull the panel up slightly and then down the aisle by sliding it along the aisle and under the seats. Guess what we found-NOTHING.

Floor panel up

The foam under the panel was worn which Baby Boy replaced. The flexing of that particular panel happens because of its position. The panel is located right over the wing box area and as such there are few lateral supports to attach it to the aircraft structure. Most panels have the long floor beams running the length of the plane and several intercostals (non structural beams running across the cabin from floor beam to floor beam. The wing box area is built in such a way that those intercostals are not installed there, as such the floor panel itself has to span a wider area and it flexes more than others do. Also this is a 700 aircraft, when they built the thing they tried to save as much weight as possible and left out as many of those non-structural intercostals as possible.

Waiting out on the wing for parts.

All in all it was a wasted effort but I wanted to show Baby Boy and the other guys that the popping sound it nothing to worry about and can be explained away. It was a beautiful day out there and we had all the doors and overwing exits open to enjoy it. We had the plane back in service in a couple of hours and learned something while doing it.

The Legend of ...........

I'm going to start a new series about "The Legend of......." This will be about mechanics that I have met and worked with who have made a lasting impression on me and others. Also since it is the holidays I have been away from the blog for a bit but I will try to keep it going and will resume with regular additions after the new year so thanks for your patience.

My buddy SkyWalker suggested this subject and even the person to start with!! Thanks brother!

The legend of Don Tripp.

Don Tripp used to work with us in Oakland. When I first got the job Tripp was already working there. He was a former Marine and you could tell he was a larger than life type of guy. One of my first memories of Tripp was one midnight shift when I was working at gate 17 doing an Service Check. Tripp was working all the way at gate 25 which is pretty far away in Oakland. I was outside doing something when I hear "FUUU@@@%%%", followed by sparks moving rapidly away from the tail of the plane on gate 25. Tripp was working on an APU, up on a stand and things were not going well. As per his character he was screaming and the sparks were his open end wrench which he threw in his frustration.

Tripp was the quintessential Marine. He told you what he thought and did not give a damn about what you thought. To be honest when I first started here I was intimidated by him. I knew he was tough and I was still new to this whole Line MX game.

For a while we Oakland Mechs were going to San Jose for one Service Check and any MELs and then onto San Francisco for any MEL issues. We did this with a bread truck stocked with parts and able to carry any additional things we would need for the trip. We all took turns going down to San Jose but after a while the same few guys would go. Tripp was one of those guys. He liked to travel and do the non-scheduled work involved in that type of job. Tripp had worked in San Jose at his previous job and had famously stood at the open R-1 door of an MD-80 as it was being tugged from the remote parking to the gate wearing nothing but his combat boots! (Since it was his last day there it seemed like the thing to do.)

Tripp would do things like pounce on crickets and catch moths and then shove them into his mouth and eat them, apparently they taste like peanut butter. Tripp wore old school marine corps shorts that were wayyy short and always a Hawaiian shirt for I.D. pictures.

Tripp was a pretty good mechanic but I'm not sure how he would survive in this day of computer-jet. He was definitely an old school, old-iron, hit and beat it until it worked type of guy. He went through Mag-Lites regularly simply because he beat them to death.

The man had no type of table manners and in fact often had a box of Entemanns chocolate donuts for lunch followed by a carton of milk. He chewed and talked with his mouth open and cussed like the marine he was. While he worked in Oakland he dated a woman who ran an escort service and lived in a condo with little furniture but for some reason it had a barbers chair in it. He collected frogs, and adult movies.

By the time the end came for Tripp he had become a close friend. I respected him and appreciated his I am what I am ways. The end was not very graceful for Tripp and it was full of controversy. He was put in a bad spot by a person he thought was a friend and that made him go over the edge. The early days at Oakland maintenance could not be considered complete without Tripp and I will not soon forget his honesty with everyone and his interesting troubleshooting methods (remember the Mag-Lites?).

I think that knowing Tripp during my early years of Line Maintenance helped to sculpt me and in many ways helped me to find my voice and realize that I could also speak up and say what I thought also. We miss having Tripp here and I wish him well wherever he may end up.

The 737-800 Finally Routed Through OAK!

We have been preparing for months now and it seems like OAK is the last station to get a regularly scheduled line for the 800 but it has finally arrived. Once a day from OAK to DEN. The first one came in on a Sunday and it was met by all the enthusiastic employees taking pictures etc. This kind of surprised me since we had the plane come through once before as a diversion from SFO. I thought maybe the fanfare would die down but it did not.

The mechanics were (of course) not all that happy but we did go out and meet the plane. In addition to the new plane we at SWA are switching to TRAX for our maintenance software program. The TRAX system has been, how should I put this..........problematic. The system itself is supposed to be better than the old one we are used to (WIZARD) and how could it not. WIZARD is a DOS based program but we have been using it for so long that we all know how to move around in it and it makes sense to us. This TRAX thing is a WINDOW based program and it operates as such. You would think that it would be easy to use but it's not.

One TRAX write up can take as long as one hour to input into the damn thing! The mechanics have been slowly using TRAX as our older -700s are switched over to the system. Each night we get one or two TRAX planes to work, but the paperwork as far as entering into the computer seems like a nightmare. Make a long story short-we dread having ANY write ups on TRAX planes.

The -800 came into gate 30 so I along with a few other mechanics walked over to check her out. All the rampers, ops, csa's were busy snapping photos of the plane and we mechanics went right over to the wheel well and did our oohs and ahhs. Pointing out the little differences here and there we noticed the larger hyd return filters and the difference in the main wheels. I also opened the E/E bay and peeked around, not much changed. When I opened the forward E/E door I was amazed by the size of the weather radar RT. The old RT (Receiver/Transmitter) was a big black box about the same size as an IRU unit, lets say 15" x 15" and weighs about 25lbs. The new box is a standard small smart box, about 3" x 15" and it has to weigh less than 5lbs.

Going up stairs the interior is beautiful!! I really like the "Sky" interior although I have heard that the materials that make it up are not standing up to the beating our passengers put it through. Of course while I'm poking about I hear over the radio that the captain on gate 30 has a write up she wants to talk to us about.

Immediately I'm thinking "great, this thing may be down for this stupid write-up". All our TRAX planes that have write-ups have to be signed off, and the paperwork (log page) entered into the computer before the plane can be dispatched. The release for the plane is locked until the computer work is done. As I stated earlier it takes forever to input these things into the system.

When I got to the flight deck the captain tells me she had an overspeed and that she wrote it up. Then she tells me that there is an open write up in the book from the last flight crew about the same thing!

Now I'm almost in a panic! Two write-ups on a TRAX plane which by the way is also an ETOPS plane, one of which is an open write-up! I called MX-CTRL and they told me the overspeeds on the -800s are a nuisance fault and I could sign it off as 'Info noted by MX".

I immediately brought the pages back to the office and handed them to the Foreman. He immediately got on the phone to find out how to enter the log pages into TRAX. Luckily he got back to me and said that the "INFO ONLY" write-ups don't need to be entered-PHEW!

I think we will work out our issues with TRAX and to be honest the -800 does not scare me as much anymore. The -800 is the future of SWA, as well as the 737 MAX, and the sooner I get used to it the better.

To Cargo Door Or To Not Cargo Door

This past weekend an old -300 came in and I had the pleasure of Terminating the plane. While doing the walk around I noticed that the rampers were having trouble opening the aft cargo door. This is not unusual and in fact happens a lot. Usually there is a bag or box that has fallen on the door or the door was closed with the cable or cable handle struck in the door jamb. This was what I suspected was the trouble but once the ramp supervisor and I got the door open it was clear that the threshold plate was damaged.

The plate was cracked and peeled up in such a way that it formed a pointy triangle that stuck up about and inch to an inch and a half. The rampers still had to get the bags off and I had to move the plane from the gate to Tango remote area. I got a hammer and beat the section back down so I could close the door for the remote and the rampers could off load the bags. The threshold is stainless steel and once I got it bent back, the piece broke off. I was able to remote the plane and wrote up the threshold plate on the board in the shop so that the mechanic who worked the plane that night could inspect it.

The next morning I found out that the threshold needed to be replaced (big surprise) AND the cargo door needed to be replaced as well. I admit that I did not look at the door when i was terminating as I should have done once I saw the condition of the threshold. I was surprised even more when I was told that the cargo door was being flown in on a ferry flight for US to change out! I know that we are mechanics and the this is a job that we SHOULD be able to accomplish in OAK. The reason I was surprised about it is that we have very little tooling in OAK and even less hardware etc.

Old Threshold with piece missing that I broke off.

Those of us who have worked hangar work or non-sched type maint. know that work like this is not as straight forward as it sounds. There is always something that will go wrong or some part that will be needed which is not originally thought of. In other words the can of worms will be opened!!

The plane should have been ferried out to PHX as was originally planned but as we know MX control knows better than us when it comes to such things. Instead of ferrying the plane to PHX the door was ferried to us and of course the plane sat here for three days because:

We have no parts.
We have no tooling.
The new threshold plate came without any holes and was then mis-drilled.
PHX mechanics had to come and RESCUE us.
The new door had to be fitted into the old opening.

On day two I went out to the plane to get some grip lengths for our manager, this was before the PHX rescue mission, I decided to check and see how far off the new mis-drilled threshold was. when I put it on I saw that only two of the holes were off, and those holes were not off by much. One hole was almost off by half a hole the other by about a quarter of a hole. I hate to say this but I think that I could have made it work. The persons assigned to the job were not real happy about doing it and so I think they found a convenient stopping point once they saw that the holes were a little off.

This is a recurring theme at OAK. We have people who are not interested in going the extra mile of trying to solve problems in order to get planes fixed. As I keep saying we in OAK cried, and cried about doing OPC mods (moving the On Board Computers in the -300 AC) until they stopped assigning them to us and MX Control thinks we will be able to hang a new cargo door? Any non-sched mechanic would have drilled out those holes and put larger fasteners or washers or something on it to make it work. Like I said this was an old plane and it has no winglets, and only one FMC so I believe SWA is going to be getting rid of it soon. A couple of button head fasteners instead of flush ones would not hurt this plane in any way shape or form.

The PHX guys came in and actually did the real maintenance work that the OAK guys didn't want to do. When they were half way through they came back to the shop and what really amazed them was that no one came out to watch them and maybe learn how to do the job for the next time. That says a lot about the level of work ethic in OAK and about what we once had that seems to be missing now-pride of workmanship.

Guys are more interested in resting than working and god forbid you ask them to try and learn something new. This is one of the things that is chasing me out of this station. Sure it's expensive to live here and I have personal reasons for leaving but this laziness is one of the things that makes it all little easier to make the move. I'm not sure if any of that exists in DAL but I am sure that it has been lost in OAK and that's a real sad thing for me to think about. I have learned a lot from a lot of people while working in OAK but now there are way more people who need to learn way more but don't want to. They have us out numbered.