Mechanic's Mistake Trashes $244 Million Aircraft 428
Hugh Pickens writes "An accident report is finally out for the Air Force E-8C Joint Surveillance Targeting and Attack Radar System that had started refueling with a KC-135 on on March 13, 2009 when the crew heard a 'loud bang throughout the midsection of the aircraft.' Vapor and fuel started pouring out of the JSTARS from 'at least two holes in the left wing just inboard of the number two engine.' The pilot immediately brought the jet back to its base in Qatar where mechanics found the number two main fuel tank had been ruptured, 'causing extensive damage to the wing of the aircraft.' How extensive? 25 million dollars worth of extensive. What caused this potentially fatal and incredibly expensive accident to one of the United States' biggest spy planes? According to the USAF accident report, a contractor accidentally left a plug in one of the fuel tank's relief vents (PDF) during routine maintenance. 'The PDM subcontractor employed ineffective tool control measures,' reads the report. Tool control measures? 'You know, the absolutely basic practice of accounting for the exact location of every tool that is used to work on an airplane once that work is finished.' Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz just told Congress, 'there is a JSTARS platform that was damaged beyond economical repair that we will not repair.' So, if this is the one Schwartz is talking about, then one mechanic's mistake has damaged a $244 million aircraft beyond repair."
RFID (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like a great case for RFID inventory control ; tag every tool, log them out of the toolbox with a loop mounted on the side, log them back in again when you return them.
The article linked mentions this on the second page ; I don't see why you should be limited to the 3M solution though (except maybe they'll bribe someone to make it a regulatory necessity). You can get nearly 2,000 tags for about $100, so it's not like it would be expensive.
I'm not really understanding... (Score:5, Interesting)
A few points occur to me:
1_ ...how $25 million in repairs is "beyond economical repair" on a $240 million plane? If I have a $20,000 car that's in an accident, it's not uncommon to have $2000 in repairs...that's hardly "totalled".
2. Now, looking at the pictures, that's pretty serious...but then it's more than $25 million in damage.
3. the E8 is a converted 707...didn't they stop building those in the 1970s? If this is a 30 year old airframe (at best) then either that damage is $25 million or the plane is worth less than $240 million today.
4. Finally, as I understand it this damage was done by a subcontractor. When I use subcontractors, they have liability insurance to cover the systems they're working on, plus potential liabilities. Doesn't the US government require AT LEAST such protections when farming out work to contractors?
By the way, I'd like to further remind the Air Force that this is a COMBAT aircraft. Granted, it's not supposed to be in dogfights or shot at, but this is a piece of military equipment, maintained in difficult conditions/circumstances by relatively inexperienced crew (for example an aircraft carrier's crew largely is swapped out about every 18-36 months). That seems incompatible with its evident fragility.
Re:Affirmative Action (Score:1, Interesting)
No. That's the first thing you thought.
I'm attacking Affirmative Action, which is the truly racist policy.
I'm sure there are many excellent African aircraft mechanics. The problem is that Affirmative Action and diversity policies can overlook a persons lack of skill and credentials merely to meet some quota.
Re:Shit Happens (Score:5, Interesting)
The electronics package is 200 mill put it in another plane. So saying its a total loss is bs. The plane is basicly a kc-135 they have plenty of spares including whole wings.
Re:Shit Happens (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been an A&P for over 35 years and I've seen worse.
(by pilots and mechanics)
In Chuck Yeager's biography he talked about an assembly mechanic who was installing a bolt the wrong way, even though his instructions said the right way to do it. Resulted in numerous fighter plane crashes and almost killed Yeager when he was test flying one of the planes to see what was causing the crashes.
Forgotten Lesson of WWII (Score:5, Interesting)
World War II, if you watch enough of the History Channel, boiled down to quantity winning over quality. Our Sherman Tanks, for example, were utter crap compared to the Panzer and Tiger tanks. But, the USA was able to build a lot of them and they were simple and cheap. The Panzer and Tiger, however, were built in small numbers because they were complex machines.
Germany was 10 years ahead of the USA technologically. But, Germany wasn't able to build to the quantity needed to fight an industrial giant like the USA, especially while we were bombing their industrial capacity to zero (and losing 60% of our aircraft to do it).
It is sad that USA is now following Germany's example. We are building overly complex, hugely expensive equipment that cannot be easily field serviced, and building them in limited numbers because we cannot afford them in great quantity.
Eventually, even though we are 10 years ahead of every opponent technologically, someone will be able to over-run us in a drawn out war simply by having great numbers of simpler, cheaper equipment, and a lot of it.
And I think we all know who's the industrial giant now, that can produce great quantities of material quickly and cheaply.....
Re:Althourhg it was a private contractor (Score:4, Interesting)
Ben Rich (head of Lockhead in the 90's) said in his book that one time he was at the GE engine plant. One of the guys was pointed at two jet engines. He said they were the exact same engine. The only difference was one was for the Air Force and had 200 extra inspectors look at it and cost twice as much for that reason. Next time you want to blame the contractors for how much things cost take into consideration all the extra regs and paperwork they are required to do. Another fav of his is how they go crazy labeling things secret or top secret. That doubles the paperwork and makes all their work that much more difficult.
He compared the overall cost of a new plane for the air force to the overall cost of the new model for the Mustang. The amounts were fairly close. Ford gets to spread the cost over thousands of cars. The manufacturer of a planes gets to spread the cost over a few hundred planes.
Re:Shit Happens (Score:2, Interesting)
What I don't get is, if you say there's 25M of damage, isn't that supposed to mean it would cost 25M to repair? If you have an estimate for the repair, that means you can repair it; so why is it written off, instead?
Re:Shit Happens (Score:5, Interesting)
Or if you're going to intentionally violate international standards of assembly, management needs to hire a QA/QC guy who's sole job is to make sure things are put together the wrong way. Unless of course he failed in this case, but he was someone important's son, so he can't be blamed...
There's always a way to design something the "right" way. If clearances are that tight, g-loading of the frame would have screwed it up eventually, or a tiny piece of shrapnel could take down a plane... A "combat" style repair during an emergency on a distant island could cause the loss of a plane, this isn't just a manufacturing problem.
This incident was an hour long seminar in class and at the end of class, there's no way around it, it was an engineering failure but some lowly peon took the hit, with a sub-text esoteric or whatever meaning that even when engineering "wins" in a corporate BS scenario, everyone else really "loses".
We came up with all manner of solutions like "shorter bolts everywhere not just one shorter bolt", "rivets not bolts", "reroute the cable". One unpopular one was "well, in wartime, you're gonna take losses, just deal with it".
The funniest, yet best human factors solution, which won the award for the best solution, was to work with human nature, not against it, and make the build fixture upside down. So the plant workers install the bolts right side up, from their perspective. Don't even tell the bolt installer plant workers that they're working upside down. I wish I could say that was my bright idea, but mine was a crappy solution involving spray painting bolt heads and spray painting the holes on the bolt side using a fixture, which got shot down, something about F-ing up corrosion control chromate primer or whatever.
Re:Look on the bright side (Score:5, Interesting)
And he reports the surgeons are mostly resistant to the idea.
Re:Shit Happens (Score:5, Interesting)
Just for a rule of thumb guideline - in the Navy, we never threw anything away without the Captain's permission. Something broke, the responsible parties looked at it, calculated what it would cost to repair, then reported to the Old Man. If the repair cost was greater than 60% of a new replacement, then it was deep-sixed. Otherwise, we repaired.
And, labor didn't factor into the calculations. With 350 men aboard who weren't going anywhere without the Captain's permission, the cost of labor didn't merit any consideration.
Re:Shit Happens (Score:4, Interesting)
The wing walker is a ground crew member for an aircraft that monitors the position of the aircraft's wings as you are towing it in or out of a hangar or around other aircraft. Their job is to walk just beside where the end of the wing would be and alert the tow tractor driver if the plane is about to hit something. Of course, the wings aren't the only part of the plane that can hit stuff, so wing walkers are supposed to keep an eye on the whole thing.
A C-5-A is almost 250 feet long with a wing span around 220 feet. That's a lot of aircraft to watch.
Re:I'm not really understanding... (Score:2, Interesting)
I lived just off the end of the runway of the airport where they assembled and tested the original JSTAR. It was a big deal in my town because every third person living there worked for a defense contractor, and you couldn't sling a dead cat without hitting someone working on the project. I remember seeing the JSTAR every day on the way to work, and what they had to do to that 707's airframe could easily be described as flaying.
I'd never seen an aircraft pulled that far open, even for major overhauls or refits. The JSTAR upgrade touched every single system on that plane, but after they sealed her back up, she looked like every other KC-135, except with that thingy behind the nose wheel and no refueling boom.
So no, JSTAR conversions aren't cheap. Not by a long shot.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)