Mechanics Pressured to Take Shortcuts: CBS Report

Low&Slow

Low&Slow

Ancora imparo
Unfortunately, this isn't anything new. I also doubt that aviation is the only industry with these types of attitudes.
There is a supervisor where I work who keeps trying to get mechanics to take shortcuts instead of fixing deficiencies correctly. He is very production control oriented, and not so much maintenance oriented, even though he is a maintenance supervisor. He neither works on nor flies our aircraft, so the only thing that affects him is how fast he can clear a "red-X".
He's annoying, like a gnat that won't leave you alone, but I don't take anything he says seriously. Hopefully nobody else ever will either. His suggestions for repairs make him look and sound really ignorant. We warn every new guy about him and tell them not to be intimidated by him or do anything he suggests, but to follow the repair procedures in the maintenance manuals.
 
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knot4u

knot4u

Repeat Offender
I've been put on the fecal matter list and subsequently fired for refusing to sign off inspections that either weren't done correctly or that found defects that would have blown the deadline so they weren't going to be corrected. It was always "We'll take care of it when we have more time, just sign it". Nope.
 
Crop Duster

Crop Duster

E pluribus unum
NickH said:
Still gotta lubricate the jackscrew....
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Yeah... and with the correct lubricant.
I can't believe some of the pilots who wave off Mx complaints so blithely. Probably the same dudes who bought more stock in 2007 because the economy was sooooo terrific.
 
knot4u

knot4u

Repeat Offender
The thing that really bothers me about this sort of attitude from management is why should we even waste the time doing the inspection if nothing is going to get fixed? If they have that attitude going into an inspection why even take anything apart? Just find someone willing to sign it off (not me), let it fly and get paid. That attitude reduces a large portion of my job to a waste of time and effort leading me to be a very unhappy employee. But there are mechanics that are will go along with it, willingly or unwillingly, to provide for their families. A reputation as a troublemaker can be exaggerated and hard to get rid of in such a relatively small community. The other part is the fact that those that do go along with it are seen as team players and are often promoted with that attitude and end up perpetuating it with the mechanics they end up supervising.
 
Roger Roger

Roger Roger

Paid to sleep, fly for fun
Crop Duster said:
Yeah... and with the correct lubricant.
I can't believe some of the pilots who wave off Mx complaints so blithely. Probably the same dudes who bought more stock in 2007 because the economy was sooooo terrific.
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Again, I seem to remember the NTSB report very specifically saying that the unapproved substitution of grease was immaterial to the crash. It was primarily the improper procedure, maybe the extended interval (though I think they may also not have weighed that heavily) and pencil whipping the inspection that detected the excessive wear.
 
nibake

nibake

Powder hound
It's been a couple of years since reading it, but I remember thinking that the extended interval was a big deal. That is, not what caused it, but had the interval not been changed, the problem could have been caught and prevented.
 
Roger Roger

Roger Roger

Paid to sleep, fly for fun
nibake said:
It's been a couple of years since reading it, but I remember thinking that the extended interval was a big deal. That is, not what caused it, but had the interval not been changed, the problem could have been caught and prevented.
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Something like that.

The fact is, the airplane was written up at the last major check because it failed a wear check on the jackscrew. The write up was overwritten because it would have kept the airplane from getting out on time. THAT is what killed those people.
 
Crop Duster

Crop Duster

E pluribus unum
Roger Roger said:
Again, I seem to remember the NTSB report very specifically saying that the unapproved substitution of grease was immaterial to the crash. It was primarily the improper procedure, maybe the extended interval (though I think they may also not have weighed that heavily) and pencil whipping the inspection that detected the excessive wear.
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Absolutely. The willful negligence was by far more causal than the grease. The wrong grease is just more evidence of how FUBAR their procedures were.
That said, it's my opinion that Mx should be accomplished in accordance with approved methods and materials.
 
Roger Roger

Roger Roger

Paid to sleep, fly for fun
Crop Duster said:
Absolutely. The willful negligence was by far more causal than the grease. The wrong grease is just more evidence of how FUBAR their procedures were.
That said, it's my opinion that Mx should be accomplished in accordance with approved methods and materials.
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The interval at the time was less than Boeing’s recommended.

That said, what kind of logic Boeing used for doing that on an airplane they didn’t design, I don’t know.
 
Crop Duster

Crop Duster

E pluribus unum
Roger Roger said:
The interval at the time was less than Boeing’s recommended.

That said, what kind of logic Boeing used for doing that on an airplane they didn’t design, I don’t know.
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Even deeper dive, what kind of logic did the FAA use in approving a type design in which a primary and secondary flight control relied on a component with a no-redundancy, single-point-of-failure?
 
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