In an Australian aviation world I inhabit, an engineer replacing a consumable pump spline, noticed it was slightly different to others he had seen. It had a shamfer on one end. The engineer went and checked the bin and found other empty bags meaning that other aircraft had been fitted with new splines overnight during routine maintenance and had subsequently flown away from base and were at other destinations.
No one else had noticed this slight parts difference. The engineer went to his supervisor who contacted me, I was the client with lots of people to move, these were contracted aircraft. We agreed to stop operations and ground the aircraft until we could work out if the parts conformed to OEM specification, although they were sourced from the OEM. it transpired that the shamfer had been introduced to make the part easier to insert. The OEM thought the change so small that no one would notice.
We received the OK from the OEM and the regulator after 16 hours to continue flight operations. The whole exercise had a $200k+ cost to us as the client with ongoing delays, employee overtime and ad hoc charter. Although it’s what we expect from contractors, we wrote a thank you letter to the engineer concerned for his diligence and expertise and gave him and the contractor a safety award for embracing both their own speak up if you are unsure and our own stop for safety culture.
The cost? We didn’t care about the cost, we just ate it.
Steve, it was probably one of your members. You probably didn’t hear about it. Neither should you really need to. Reporting any defect should be all be part of a normal working day in a safe culture.
I am sure all of your members would report a crack if they see one. It would be a brave and stupid operator or airline that didn’t support you 100%