Loose Row of Seats on American Airlines
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Evac slides mysteriously popped at Eastern...
Surely if the PAX stayed sat in them, they wouldn't move anywhere?
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The loose seat epidemic continues:
3rd American Airlines Flight Had Seats Come Loose
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 2, 2012 at 11:11 AM ET
DALLAS (AP) — American Airlines says passenger seats on a third flight came loose during flight and it's continuing to inspect other jets with similar seating.
American officials say that the loose seats are not an act of sabotage by angry workers.
The airline acknowledged Tuesday that seats came loose on a flight last week between Vail, Colo., and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The same thing happened on a flight Saturday and another on Monday.
American Airlines spokeswoman Andrea Huguely says the airline is inspecting eight of its Boeing 757s that share similar seat assemblies.
The planes involved in the Saturday and Monday incidents were recently worked on at an American Airlines maintenance base in Tulsa, Okla., and at a Timco Aviation Services facility in North Carolina. Timco has declined to comment.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 2, 2012 at 11:11 AM ET
DALLAS (AP) — American Airlines says passenger seats on a third flight came loose during flight and it's continuing to inspect other jets with similar seating.
American officials say that the loose seats are not an act of sabotage by angry workers.
The airline acknowledged Tuesday that seats came loose on a flight last week between Vail, Colo., and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The same thing happened on a flight Saturday and another on Monday.
American Airlines spokeswoman Andrea Huguely says the airline is inspecting eight of its Boeing 757s that share similar seat assemblies.
The planes involved in the Saturday and Monday incidents were recently worked on at an American Airlines maintenance base in Tulsa, Okla., and at a Timco Aviation Services facility in North Carolina. Timco has declined to comment.
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F27 airtest following major servicing. Pre-flight was unusually thorough.
“V1, rotate” called the other pilot. On rotate – seat promptly shot backwards. “Your’s Bill” I yelled but he hardly needed second bidding as I let go of the controls.
(Well you try holding the control column forward as your seat shoots fully aft)
The seat locking pin – and I swear I had checked it very carefully – had come unlocked.
We had a ground engineer with us. I got out of the seat and watched while engineer spent some ten minutes or so fixing my seat locking mechanism.
“V1, rotate” called the other pilot. On rotate – seat promptly shot backwards. “Your’s Bill” I yelled but he hardly needed second bidding as I let go of the controls.
(Well you try holding the control column forward as your seat shoots fully aft)
The seat locking pin – and I swear I had checked it very carefully – had come unlocked.
We had a ground engineer with us. I got out of the seat and watched while engineer spent some ten minutes or so fixing my seat locking mechanism.
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In listening to the "loose seat" story on ABC Evening News, they indicated it had nothing to do with worker sabotage. They did, however, note that the seats in question were procured from a different manufacturer and have been used to replace worn or damaged seats on various AA B-757 aircraft. Perhaps dimensional tolerances are different enough for the newer seats to come loose over time and usage when fitted into the original floor rails.
They did, however, note that the seats in question were procured from a different manufacturer and have been used to replace worn or damaged seats on various AA B-757 aircraft.
Its possible that the new seats require (but did not receive) different fastening hardware or procedures from the original ones. Its all guessing right now, but I'm sure AA will be chasing this down ASAP. Who knows how many other loose nuts they've got flying around.
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Seat tracks/racks.
Total BANE during production, have to be fitted past a certain build stage, throw in your usual low cost off the street frenchie who has NO IDEA of husbandry FOD prevention and then 8 months later they are all
due to hard objects [including swarf/tywrap heads] damaging them underneath the floorboards.
madness I tell ye.
Total BANE during production, have to be fitted past a certain build stage, throw in your usual low cost off the street frenchie who has NO IDEA of husbandry FOD prevention and then 8 months later they are all
due to hard objects [including swarf/tywrap heads] damaging them underneath the floorboards.madness I tell ye.
Alex757,
If your profile is correct, I'm glad you're showing an interest. It's a career without a dull moment for sure.
With a loose row of seats, even if the pax can find other empty seats, the risk of a unsecured flying object is too great with turbulence or even if another problem developed later which could require an emergency landing at a very short field and even exiting the runway where things really get rough. I've spoken with a few who have experience those, and they can be violent. A row of seats flying would be a threat. Having the long, wide runways of JFK appearing under your nose once the problem is figured out is too easy to pass up. Add to that the knowledge that it the major airline base of the company in question and the likelyhood of a spare aircraft or another flight to accommodate your paxs seals the deal to land there.
I would also add the flight was found to have 20+ rows with bad seats. It could have been a life threatening event in the event of a simple aborted takeoff. The RTO autobrakes setting on the B757 is very efficient for stopping and very abrubt. I'd bet most of the 20 rows would have broken off if that occurred and the possibility of serious injury or death in the event of infants and small children being held in the laps of the typical flight is something I really don't want to consider.
If your profile is correct, I'm glad you're showing an interest. It's a career without a dull moment for sure.
With a loose row of seats, even if the pax can find other empty seats, the risk of a unsecured flying object is too great with turbulence or even if another problem developed later which could require an emergency landing at a very short field and even exiting the runway where things really get rough. I've spoken with a few who have experience those, and they can be violent. A row of seats flying would be a threat. Having the long, wide runways of JFK appearing under your nose once the problem is figured out is too easy to pass up. Add to that the knowledge that it the major airline base of the company in question and the likelyhood of a spare aircraft or another flight to accommodate your paxs seals the deal to land there.
I would also add the flight was found to have 20+ rows with bad seats. It could have been a life threatening event in the event of a simple aborted takeoff. The RTO autobrakes setting on the B757 is very efficient for stopping and very abrubt. I'd bet most of the 20 rows would have broken off if that occurred and the possibility of serious injury or death in the event of infants and small children being held in the laps of the typical flight is something I really don't want to consider.
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NBC nightly News reporting that a bracket, holding the seats in the track, was installed improperly.
First Murphy's law: if a part can be installed in two different ways, one of which is wrong, it will invariably be installed that way.
First Murphy's law: if a part can be installed in two different ways, one of which is wrong, it will invariably be installed that way.
Last edited by Dushan; 2nd Oct 2012 at 22:54.
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First Murphy's law: if a part can be installed in two different ways, one of which is wrong, it will invariably be installed that way.
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Speaking of First Laws -
When I was Alex757's age, I had at least a passing understanding of Newton's First Law of motion.
And I had an encounter with it during a night TO - I was seated in a forward aisle seat, leaning over the vacant window seat to watch the view. Then jarred back to reality when a galley cart became unmoored, tried to remain at rest while the rest of the airplane accelerated to V1, and said cart delivered its contents onto my seat when it struck my armrest.
An object lesson in Newtonian physics!
When I was Alex757's age, I had at least a passing understanding of Newton's First Law of motion.
And I had an encounter with it during a night TO - I was seated in a forward aisle seat, leaning over the vacant window seat to watch the view. Then jarred back to reality when a galley cart became unmoored, tried to remain at rest while the rest of the airplane accelerated to V1, and said cart delivered its contents onto my seat when it struck my armrest.
An object lesson in Newtonian physics!
Last edited by barit1; 3rd Oct 2012 at 12:17.
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I really feel for American Airlines at the moment although I never liked them myself after flying with them a few times, I always found the customer service substandard.
Although the flight was pleasant and the crew great, just the people on the ground, losing my baggage twice out of 5 flights is an awful record.
All be it I did get them back but it’s not the point when you have a meeting the next morning and your suit and some paperwork are in the bag.
However a company that could very well fold, or at least subject to a takeover, nothing at all seems to be going their way at the moment.
With every news station reporting it this morning over and over, and so many other carriers out there, it must have hurt their bottom line massively, especially with Thanksgiving coming up and people booking flights soon to go home.
From how it was reported it seemed third party parts were used, and I guess over time when a tolerance is only slightly out its going to cause more wear than normal, and I believe any suggestion of employee sabotage is ludacris in today’s climate, would that not be classed as an act of terrorism and although the weather in Cuba is better than Boston’s this time of year I would not fancy spending it at GBay.
Although the flight was pleasant and the crew great, just the people on the ground, losing my baggage twice out of 5 flights is an awful record.
All be it I did get them back but it’s not the point when you have a meeting the next morning and your suit and some paperwork are in the bag.
However a company that could very well fold, or at least subject to a takeover, nothing at all seems to be going their way at the moment.
With every news station reporting it this morning over and over, and so many other carriers out there, it must have hurt their bottom line massively, especially with Thanksgiving coming up and people booking flights soon to go home.
From how it was reported it seemed third party parts were used, and I guess over time when a tolerance is only slightly out its going to cause more wear than normal, and I believe any suggestion of employee sabotage is ludacris in today’s climate, would that not be classed as an act of terrorism and although the weather in Cuba is better than Boston’s this time of year I would not fancy spending it at GBay.
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I took my last flight as pax with AA in 2006. Just before pushback on schedule we were told that we had to load some "Very important paperwork" as cargo. Cargo already loaded had to be moved from one hold to another. Delay, about 45 minutes. Obviously the paperwork was more important to AA than pax connections, pax time or anything else for that matter. I told the captain on exit that he had the privilege of being the last AA employee to ever look me in the eye. Delay for transplant organs or some such, OK. Paperwork, to hell with them!
After an excellent landing you can use the airplane again!
After an excellent landing you can use the airplane again!
Hope this isn't too far off topic. I read somewhere about a pilot who took a VIP up as observer back in the days of biplanes and open cockpits. He rolled inverted, then turned to the rear cockpit to point out a parachute opening far below. But there was no sign of the observer or the seat he was strapped to . . .
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Just read this on Flight Global and found it to be interesting. American points to saddle clamp for loose seats
American Airlines says that an improperly installed saddle clamp resulted in a row of seats coming loose in-flight on two of its Boeing 757-200s.
The Fort Worth-based Oneworld carrier says that the clamp in question is used to secure seats to the aircraft floor on 47 of its 757s. It has expanded seat inspections to all of these aircraft from the initial 10.
"American planned to evaluate the seats on eight Boeing 757 airplanes, but out of an abundance of caution, the decision was made to proactively evaluate a total of 47 Boeing 757 airplanes that have the same model main cabin seats with a common locking mechanism," says American.
The airline says that 36 757s were inspected by the end of 2 October, with the remaining 11 aircraft to be inspected overnight and today.
The investigations follow a row of seats becoming loose on multiple occasions on two Boeing 757-200s. The first incident occurred in row 14 seats A, B and C during flight on American 2206 from Vail to Dallas-Fort Worth on 26 September, the same row then came loose after a flight from Dallas to Boston on the same day, and it came loose a third time during flight 443 from New York's John F. Kennedy (JFK) to Miami after which the aircraft returned to JFK on 1 October.
The problem was first identified on the 757 in row 12 seats D, E and F on the ground in Miami on 27 September after which the clamps were tightened. The row came loose again in the air on flight 685 from Boston to Miami and the aircraft was diverted to JFK on 29 September.
American and the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are working closely regarding the seat clamp investigation, the airline says.
The FAA said that preliminary information indicated that the seats on two of the diverted flights were recently removed and re-installed, in a statement on 2 October.
The Transport Workers Union said that maintenance contractor TIMCO conducted the majority of the seat installation, in a statement on 2 October. "Problems related to seats are less likely a labour problem, but rather a management issue related to outsourcing work to third-party facilities," it says.
TIMCO says that they are working closely with American on the issue and declines further comment.
"The issue does not seem to be tied to any one maintenance facility or one workgroup," says American. "Safety is - and always will be - American's top concern."
Hope you guys and gals don't mind me posting on here, as I'm a Rotorhead
American Airlines says that an improperly installed saddle clamp resulted in a row of seats coming loose in-flight on two of its Boeing 757-200s.
The Fort Worth-based Oneworld carrier says that the clamp in question is used to secure seats to the aircraft floor on 47 of its 757s. It has expanded seat inspections to all of these aircraft from the initial 10.
"American planned to evaluate the seats on eight Boeing 757 airplanes, but out of an abundance of caution, the decision was made to proactively evaluate a total of 47 Boeing 757 airplanes that have the same model main cabin seats with a common locking mechanism," says American.
The airline says that 36 757s were inspected by the end of 2 October, with the remaining 11 aircraft to be inspected overnight and today.
The investigations follow a row of seats becoming loose on multiple occasions on two Boeing 757-200s. The first incident occurred in row 14 seats A, B and C during flight on American 2206 from Vail to Dallas-Fort Worth on 26 September, the same row then came loose after a flight from Dallas to Boston on the same day, and it came loose a third time during flight 443 from New York's John F. Kennedy (JFK) to Miami after which the aircraft returned to JFK on 1 October.
The problem was first identified on the 757 in row 12 seats D, E and F on the ground in Miami on 27 September after which the clamps were tightened. The row came loose again in the air on flight 685 from Boston to Miami and the aircraft was diverted to JFK on 29 September.
American and the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are working closely regarding the seat clamp investigation, the airline says.
The FAA said that preliminary information indicated that the seats on two of the diverted flights were recently removed and re-installed, in a statement on 2 October.
The Transport Workers Union said that maintenance contractor TIMCO conducted the majority of the seat installation, in a statement on 2 October. "Problems related to seats are less likely a labour problem, but rather a management issue related to outsourcing work to third-party facilities," it says.
TIMCO says that they are working closely with American on the issue and declines further comment.
"The issue does not seem to be tied to any one maintenance facility or one workgroup," says American. "Safety is - and always will be - American's top concern."
Hope you guys and gals don't mind me posting on here, as I'm a Rotorhead