Originally Posted by
blind pew
Along a similar track an AF 380 pilot told me that the engineer who left the spacer out of the Paris Concorde only spoke French and the manual was in ....... English only!
I didn't want to bring that up.... since that was indeed an
incident that may or may not have any relation to that
accident.
But you're touching on another sore point... the abuse of the term "engineer" in the English language (such as "sanitation engineer"?).
This was a mechanic, not an engineer.
And I'm not wanting to cast asturiums on mechanics here... as in any job there are good and bad ones. They may be excellent at their job, but they usually lack language skills... as in this case.
The real failure here was not that of the mechanic, it was the failure of a quality control system that had a mechanic carry out a job without it having been inspected properly by a qualified inspector.
CJ