I'm not having a dig here. I'm a skipper on 73's. Out of interest could you enlighten me (and the rest) on some of the 450 defects and maintenance errors you mention. I find it incredulous that an aircraft could be released, and that the company would actually pay the bill, if it came back with 450 problems. Obviously it wasn't put back into service. Do you know if any
pudgy mid level managers lost their bonus over it?????? Not likely, eh? Once again this is genuine interest.
This aircraft was in Sin earlier this year. The Qantas LAMEs who escort the check do so because of an agreement we reached with Qantas 2 years ago after the first TT episodes were aired. If it was not for those shows, it may be the case that no Qantas LAMEs could have been there and the events I will describe below could have went totally unnoticed.
I had a call from a LAME who told me the boys up there had picked up 450 faults or breaches in Qantas procedure. I thought this must be a mistake or perhaps 450 armrests had been installed on the wrong seats or a similar duplicated error. I was amazed when I saw the actual list, they were 450 odd individual errors, documented and reported to the airline. They were found by the Qf blokes up there after they had been certified by locals and before the aircraft release.
I would be happy to post the entire list here if that would be seen as worthy. Just a couple of things that come to mind -
-aircraft towed without any person in the flight deck.
-doors rigged without the calibrated counterweights that substitute for removed bussels, they used people as weights instead.
- corrosion missed in many locations.
I don't have list here but as i said, full list can be posted.