Would you make the cut?

Before I begin I have to admit that I stole this idea from another blog. When I read it it really made me think about my job and how I work. I think it's important to constantly try to improve yourself and I know that there are people out there who read this blog and are currently studying to become mechanics. Read this, my take on it, and remember it while you are working.

I have worked for SWA for almost 16 years now. I see a lot of new guys come and I have seen a lot of new guys go (fired or transferred out). I think that SWA is a great place to work and I love the job. When I see people that I work with behave as if they don't care about the job or take advantage of the job it really bugs me. I have spoken to some mechanics and their attitude is "they can't make me do it so why should I go the extra mile?" I agree that the company can not force us to do things but my question is: why would you not?

The things I am talking about are getting your Engine Run Qualification and getting your Taxi Qualification and getting CAT III Qualified. We work in a Line MX environment. That means that we do all the maintenance on the plane. We work engines and avionics and EVERYTHING. Is it fair to other mechanics when you do not get those qualifications? When a guy does not have those qualifications then another guy has to go out and do your work for you. Run YOUR engine. Taxi YOUR plane. Sign off YOUR CAT III work. It makes no sense to me as a MECHANIC to have to be relying on others to complete my work for me. And it seems to me that when you were hired you said you would do ANYTHING to get the job. Which brings me to the subject: Would you make the cut?

Take a good look at your work performance in the past year. Be honest. Have you done everything that you could have? Have you been calling in sick every Friday? (Hot topic these days). Do you go out of your way to learn about how the plane works? (I bet you said you would during the interview). When another mechanic is out there working at 4am and you have been done for two hours but decided to wait out there on your plane before coming into the shop (sand bagging) are you "thinking outside of the box" like you said you do on your resume? Does being a "go getter" or "self starter" like is mentioned in the interviews mean that you go and get the easiest airplane to work on? How many times during the interview did you tell the HR guy that you were going to bitch and moan about what job you would be assigned on any given night?

It's been sixteen years and I guess the interview questions have changed. Today's interview must be something like this:

"Welcome please come and work for SWA, oh and don't bother trying or learning we have a handful of guys who will do your work for you."

I recently had a convo with a guy who was complaining about the work he was assigned. As the Lead left the room this guy (I'll call him "Yellow") called out over his shoulder "well, you better send someone over to run my engines for me." This, to me, meant that the Lead should not assign Yellow any work that involves running engines! At least that is what Yellow believes. So I asked Yellow how long he has been here (which dose not really matter) and why he does not have his engine run yet. He tells me that he did "all that" at his last job and is not "interested" in doing it here. I said "I bet that's not what you told them during the interview". He tried to blow it off and I called him a lazy sack and he went on his way.

We should all take a close look at ourselves. If we had to interview again today would we make the cut? If the company decided to re-interview all of us, who would they keep? Would they keep the guys who can't even look up things in the maintenance manual? Not likely. So why not learn?

If the company could (which of course they can't) and they re-interviewed, knowing what they know about your work ethic, would you be invited back? I can say that I'm not even sure I would be back in that case, but I know that at least half of the 50ish mechanics we have here in OAK would not be back if I were doing the selecting.

It's an interesting exercise to think about it.

P-40 Kittyhawk Found in Egyptian Desert

P-40 Kittyhawk Found in Egyptian Desert

More cool old planes found! Check out the above link and then the link to the original article for photos.
Goat

FAA Proposes Fines for Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air

FAA Proposes Fines for Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air

"The agency says that during 10 occasions between June 19, 2010 and Jan. 13, 2011, Alaska allegedly performed maintenance on six of its Boeing 737s while failing to comply with the “required alternative deactivation procedures.” Alaska allegedly failed to document alternative actions it carried out and to install the appropriate danger tag, which reduces safety hazards as technicians are working on maintenance and to prevent damage to the aircraft parts and systems themselves."

This is crazy! Did you know that we could get fined for not using our "Lock Out-Tag Out" proceedures? The FAA is getting desperate if you ask me.

Goat

737 Nose-Gear Extension Confirms Larger Engine Choice

737 Nose-Gear Extension Confirms Larger Engine Choice

As we figured the nose gear will be longer, 8 inches longer.

Goat

Pristine Spitfires Found in Burma

Pristine Spitfires Found in Burma

Not only am I an aviation professional but I am also am airplane nerd. I love all airplane but have a special fondness for old WWII aircraft. This story is amazing! They found as many as 120 Spitfire airplanes boxed up from the war time in Burma. Enjoy the attached article!
Goat

Enter The "PROBBIES"

We have a new batch of mechanics here in Oakland. It seems like we are always hiring but that is the nature of our station. California is a very expensive place to live and the people we hire move on to greener pastures. We call the new guys "probbies" because they are on probation. If at any time during their probationary period the company deems it necessary to fire the probbie then it can, with certain stipulations of course.

I still remember vividly the time I spent on probation. I was proud, happy, ecstatic really, to have been hired and was willing to do any thing the mechanics asked me to do in order to keep the job. There were three of hired at once and we swept the shop, tire connexes, rotated the new tires to the back of the connex, cleaned up, stayed up, and tried to always look busy yet stay out of the way. As I said there were three of us, Teflon, Revere, and myself. The schedule for all the mechanics used to be posted on the window of the managers office. It listed all the mechanics and their days off. About a month into the probation I came into work off my weekend, I clocked in and notice that there was a big red line through Revere's name. Already paranoid I froze and realized that Revere got canned! I told Teflon but of course he was not worried. The probation period way back then was 3 months long and it was a very long three months, but it was also a time for learning, building camaraderie, and showing what you were made of.

Nowadays the probation period is SIX MONTHS! That's a long time. Of course there is way more to learn then there used to be. While we can no longer make the probbies clean up the shop or clean off  the golf carts we can and should teach them what they will need to know to succeed at SWA (or where ever you, the reader works). We want mechanics who are go getter's, self-starters, willing to listen, willing to learn (on their own and under instruction), who we are willing to work with for a long time (the rest of our careers). We also need to deprogram them from where ever they came from. No one wants to hear "well at Delta we used to do this..." We need them to want to help, not be afraid to ask questions and we have to figure out if they are "stand up" type people.

I bring all these things up because I heard a rumor that some mechanics do no want to work with the probbies. They say it's not their job to "train" new guys. They don't want to be "slowed down" by having to explain the ins and outs of the job to the new person.

I say not only should you be required to work with new guys but you should want to. These guys need to be taught how we do things in our shop. They also need to see what kind of guys and gals they will be working with when and if they pass probation. The probbies are like sponges and if they get treated like s@&% then that is how they will act once they are off probation. I'm not saying that they should not still clean up and take the normal ribbing from the mechanics-it builds character. What I'm saying is that if you choose not to show the probbies how to work then you have no right to complain about how they work. When they are off probation and not working how you think they should then you most likely did not explain things to them when they were on probation.

The other thing that is ironic is that I'm sure the guys saying they don't want to work with the probbies got plenty of help while they were on probation. As a matter of fact I bet some of them just barely passed probation themselves!

winglet lightning strike

When I was a Delta we new guys were called "JEEPS". Just Enough Education to Pass. "Hey JEEP go get me an airhose." "Hey JEEP get me a drill." "Hey JEEP pay attention." I made it through and the next set of guys got the ribbing. It's a right of passage in our industry and one that any mechanic worth a dime does not mind going through, but remember it's a two way street. Time to suck it up and slow down to show these new people the way. Who knows you may even learn something.

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.