Planning

You may not think of planning when you think of aircraft maintenance but a good mechanic is a good planner. Of course you can see that planning is involved when you are disassembling an item, in order to get it apart and back together again. When going to a gate call at work a good mechanic will try to bring with him or her all the parts or tools needed. Sometimes this is easier said than done due to the intentionally vague descriptions of problems that some pilots report.




With proper planning the evenng clouds will be the most dramatic part of your day


The worse gate calls to deal with are what we call "cockpit chats". When a crew calls you up to the plane to chat it can mean anything. Hard to plan for any and every eventuality so I usually just bring my small tool pouch up with me in case it is something I can fix real quick. I have had cockpit chats to fix everything from a missing cup holder in the flight deck to aircraft damage. I can understand being discreet in some cases but a few (a lot) of the crews take this a little too far. We mechanics only have about 20 minutes to trouble shoot and fix problems and playing the guessing game slows that down. I have had crews tell me that they do not like to transmit the problems they are having over the radio because "they" might be listening. Who "they" are is unclear to me. The FAA has a lot more to do than listen in on our OPS frequency to see if the pilots are using the correct radio protocol. Back in the day people used to use radio scanners to listen in on airport traffic but even that got boring real quick, so I think that it is safe Mr. or Ms. Pilot.

When I passed probation all those years ago and started to evaluate the newer guys on their performance while they were on probation I realized how important being a good planner is. My boss at the time was a guy I will call Tator. Tator would watch the new guys work. He often remarked how this was that guys third or forth trip back from the plane to get parts or something like that. His concern was simple: if you are spending all night running back and forth to stores you are taking longer than needed to finish your jet. Back then we had fewer people at night so every mechanic had to do more than one plane a night just so we could make launch in the morning.

When I terminate a plane I write everything down that I find wrong and I put the discrepancies on the big board where our planes are listed for the night. This used to be common practice but not too much anymore. I sometimes get flack from the mid night shift guys for writing all these things that I found wrong on their plans onto the board. This is confusing to me because I saved them a trip by telling them what they need before they get out to plane and have to turn around to get it.

It is simple we have to get our planes out on time. Unfortunately it is part of our job to ensure on time departures for our customers. I will be the first to say that if you as a mechanic have to take a delay in order to properly fix a jet than go right ahead, safety first. Planning and being a good planner will, however minimize those delays.

When a call comes in OR when you get your assignment for midnight shift think to yourself: what am I going to need to bring with me in order to fix this plane? When a call comes in about a coffee maker-bring a coffee maker. I know that 9 times out of 10 we can fix the original coffee maker but when that one time comes up it is a lot easier and quicker to change one out if it is with you or at least on your golf cart waiting for ya. We have a guy at work who never brings things with him to his gate calls and he annoys everyone by going out and ALWAYS calling for someone to bring him parts. Don't be that guy!!