I have an amusing story about something that was NOT discovered! Aberdeen in the early nineties, with a well known AS332 operator. The SFO goes to the aircraft first to do the walk around which is uneventful. He notes the baggage bay was open but thought nothing of it, and closed it after looking at the baggage. The payload was low, with not that many bags loaded, so he didn’t climb up to check the tail boom hold.
He strapped in and was joined by the captain, to whom he confirmed “all good”. They then started up and taxied to the hotspot to load their pax RR.
Unbeknown to them both, a ‘greenie’ (avionics engineer) had gone to the aircraft earlier, to do some unrecorded troubleshooting of the magnetic flux sensors - located in the tail boom……
His first indication that things were about to go awry, was the baggage bay door being closed, followed a few minutes later by the engines starting and the aircraft moving. Being a greenie, he quick-wittedly moved back to the main baggage bay and attempted to pull the CVFDR CBs, hoping to trigger the warning panel in the cockpit. Unfortunately it required the cockpit CBs to be pulled too, so there was no response.
He then remembered that there is a small removable panel on the rear cabin bulkhead, intended for pointing a portable fire extinguisher through, in the event of a baggage fire. So, he clambered around moving bags out of the way, until he found it and removed it. Then, tapped the poor unsuspecting passenger, sitting in front of it, on the shoulder!
I think what came out, was
- don’t do undocumented maintenance activities that nobody knows you’re doing
- if working in the tailboom on the ramp, attach long dayglo streamers to announce the fact
- don’t cut corners doing the walk around, even if there seems no reason to check something.