Originally Posted by
Fris B. Fairing
Back off topic for a minute.
I just remembered that there was another odd aeroplane around that time. Qantas sold B747-238B VH-EBG to El Al in May 88 but it came back into the Qantas fleet on lease in Sept 88. The lower lobe galley had been ripped out and the cabin was reconfigured so it wasn't the EBG we knew. Many manuals had to be rewritten and the aeroplane was generally more trouble than it was worth. It went back to El Al in June 89.
EBG, was an interesting aircraft. It had a very distinctive tearing noise on the flight deck, each take off. Needless to say, many crews found it quite disconcerting, and repeatedly entered it in the Tech Logs. So they decided to pull her off line, and bascially gave her a phase check, even though she was not due, and pulled the flight deck apart, x rayed all parts, and found nothing. So they put her back together and back on line she went, only to continue the unusual noise, and the complaint in the logs continued. Probably still doing it, in some African country, where she does the milk run.