Hi all,
EARL,
When I operated AAI (or any other) cargo B747 Classic, we always only armed the L1 door for evacuation from the main deck, and the upper deck one (or both if they were fitted).
Not to preclude an evacuation from any other door, but that was always the norm.
and...Whiskery,
If any scrutiny of AAI maintenance was worth its salt, it would find a mind-boggling amount of discrepencies, and thats only from my own personal experiences there.
Give you just one example, happened back in late 2002 in Lagos.
The B747 pax airplane was down for a day for regular maintenance.
Late that night it was scheduled LOS-JFK.
Around 0200 local I was called out to crew that flight to JFK, because the a/c had returned to LOS with an engine shut down, and crew duty limits would not allow the original crew to continue. It was about an 11 hour flight, if I recall.
Very curious, I arrived at the airplane, crew still aboard (because pax were still aboard), and found out they had experienced a fire warning on #4 engine, shut it down, dumped lots of fuel, and landed with no real problems.
During the flight prep, I spoke to some of the maint. people, and found out that the engine mechanic had done the normal borescope check on all the engines the day prior, and had not replaced one of the access covers correctly on #4.
This would normally be picked up by the Indepentant Inspection following, but, since the lead mechanic was back at the hotel, he did his own independant inspection, and signed everything up tight!
Unfortunately, it was picked up by the fire warning system!
Not another thing was ever heard, and nobody in maint. wanted to talk about it - funny about that!
That incident was one of many I was involved with, thats why I'm now not there!
Don't talk to me about no problems at AAI!
Cheers