Great posts, Barkingmad 787 and 802, and Filler Dent 789.
Dear Airline management,
Once upon a time someone forgot to remove the ground lock pins in the u/c before departure and the a/c had to return after dumping the best part of 100 tons of fuel.
So the pins were fitted with big red flags with the words 'Remove before Flight' to make them very visible.
This helped and reduced the number of incidents of washing Hounslow in Jet A1.
However there were a more few incidents, and it was decided that when an engineer fitted the pins they must put an entry in the tech log, thus acting as a reminder to the departing engineer and the flight crew. The tech log entry would have to be signed off before departure.
This was the state of play when I was a young PDI engineer. I never witnessed an incident of the pins being left in.
So when the management wanted to reduce the number of engineers (because they were expensive! not in my pay packet), they wanted the towing crew to fit the pins but were not happy that they should be allowed to write in the tech log, therefore the requirement to create the 'tech log reminder' was lost.
I guess you have worked out what happened next..... when the aircraft returned the pins were found fitted (not the ones kept in the flight deck, but a set that the towing crew had managed to procure for their own use, with NO FLAGS.
At least the story ends with a happy ending in as much as no one came to any harm, but the cost of these incidents is not small and on a bad day people lose their lives.
Please remember that all these controls /countermeasures /procedures /remove before flight flags, were adopted for a reason and while they are in place you may not 'see' that reason because they are working.
Anyone can save money, you simply stop doing things, any schoolboy knows that.
The trick is to keep doing stuff, but do it more efficiently.
Wake up and smell the Jet A1 and I don't mean in Hounslow!
