....and yet there are still fatal accidents happening, see my first post. Good maintenance? Then why did this happen?
It revealed the probable cause to be attributable to damage to the left wing engine pylon that occurred during an earlier engine change at American Airlines's aircraft maintenance facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma on March 29 and 30, 1979. [1] Evidence came from the flange, a critical part of the pylon assembly. It was revealed to be damaged before the crash, and investigators looked at the plane's maintenance history and found it was serviced eight weeks before the crash. The pylon was damaged due to an ill-thought-out engine removal procedure. The original procedure called for removal of the engine prior to the removal of the engine pylon. To save time and costs, American Airlines, without the approval of McDonnell Douglas, had begun to use a faster procedure. They instructed their mechanics to remove the engine with the pylon all together as one unit.
Maybe in these hard economic times they want to "save time and costs" again.
