A New York-bound Virgin Atlantic flight was canceled just moments before takeoff last week when an alarmed passenger said he spotted several screws missing from the plane’s wing.
you can’t just screwdriver those things in there man you have to torque them in to the proper spec holy balls
Well they are Phillips has so I can’t imagine you can even torque them that much.
Interestingly enough they are not Phillips it is a very similar looking standard called Torq-set. The lines of the cross are off set a little which make it much easier to put a higher torque into them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screw_drives#/media/File%3AScrew_Head_-_Torq-set.svg
Is there any advantage to those over square (Robertson)? I still see 4 contact points when applying torque. So about on par with square and inferior to 6-lobed torx.
Well… It comes down to what material is used, as well as requirements and geometry for the screw.
I love Robertson, but with enough over-torque, you shear the head off the threads or worse, round the hole if there isn’t enough rigid material around the square hole.
Failure modes are: stretching the material outwards until the bit slips. For the torq-set, you would need to shear the screw head material in front of each of the driver’s tips off and out, much less likely than shearing the head off the threads, or shearing the bit itself.
Both have the great feature that screws placed on the head stay in place, making installation much easier.
Aerodynamically, the torq-set has a much smaller ‘opening’ than does Robertson or torx.
Engineering is all about solving a problem in a quality way now, and ideally, considering issues for the future. A downside could be ice/grit getting stuck inside the smaller opening, as an example.
I think they were checking how loose the others were rather than tightening them.
Stealing catalitic converters for moneyStealing bigass phillips screws from planes
–petty theift criminals
The pilot should’ve walked out onto the wing, slapped a couple lengths of duct tape on that section, then carefully and loudly exclaimed; “ YUP! That baby ain’t goin’ anywhere.” while patting the area firmly.
It’s called speed tape, and genuinely is a thing used in the industry.
Don’t worry! There were 119 fasteners being used. Ignore the fact that 4 were missing. The plane was designed to use whatever number of fasteners we want. The amount is just a suggestion
/s
Planes are designed to have very high tolerances so yeah, they have more fasteners than necessary for exactly this reason. Of course you still want to fix it, but they are absolutely designed to not need them all.
For what it’s worth, just about every panel like this is certified to have a specific number of fasteners missing. A lot of the time there will be some other qualifiers such as not missing the leading fastener or not missing adjacent fasteners. Having a bunch in a row like this incident would probably not be ok, but I couldn’t say without the maintenence manual.
Right, these are usually spec’d so that there’s some leeway, and I don’t believe they’re lying when they say it would’ve been safe to fly. But after the recent plane debacles I don’t blame those passengers to bringing it up.
It’s just that if you know that it would be ok to miss a few and deliberately don’t install them you’re walking a very thin ice. It must be a reserve of fasteners, not a discount in fasteners used
So lucky they spotted it. Really makes you think, wouldn’t it be good to implement a system of regular professional inspections to deal with stuff like that? /s
Regular Inspections fix small issues before greater problems arise from them –> some economist with no technical knowledge or common sense goes: hurp de durp our inspections never fix any relevant defects. Better cut back on them to be more economic. –> surprisedPikachu.jpeg
Well no. Those are the accountants. Economists have studied survivorship bias. It’s the MBAs and accountants looking to cut costs that do that stupid shit.
Regular inspections are already mandate by the FAA, no economist, accountant or MBA has any say on it.
British traveler Phil Hardy, 41, was onboard Flight VS127 at Manchester Airport in the UK on Jan. 15 when he noticed the four missing fasteners during a safety briefing for passengers and decided to alert the cabin crew.
“I thought it was best to mention it to a flight attendant to be on the safe side.”
Neil Firth, the Airbus local chief wing engineer for A330, added that the affected panel was a secondary structure used to improve the aerodynamics of the plane.
Hardy said airline staff repeatedly reassured him there was no safety issue with the wing, but his fear was heightened given the recent ordeal in which an Alaska Airlines plane lost its door plug and a chunk of its fuselage flew off mid-flight.
“Each of these panels has 119 fasteners, so there was no impact to the structural integrity or load capability of the wing, and the aircraft was safe to operate,” he said.
“As a precautionary measure, the aircraft underwent an additional maintenance check, and the fasteners were replaced.”
Noteable comments:
The fasteners were not “replaced”…they were now properly included, as per the design. The public is not reassured if you cannot use precise or non-ambiguous language. It’s better to state that it was an oversight or be specific: i.e. the design calls for a maximum of 119 fasteners, but allows for a minimum number (x), and thus it was allowed to fly. - tyrionsBeard
Great! So not only do you have to pay extra for a seat, checked bags but you have to check the wings before take off. That man should be credited for their flaw. - Mabel
This feels like the beginning to Nightmare at 20000 Feet
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Second one is, hahaha!
I would have been fine flying on that plane.
Highly unlikely that panel was critical to keeping the plane in the air even if it did come off during flight.
Panels coming off during flight is still not ideal, even if they’re not critical to flying. They can hit things that are more essential.
The chances of that panel actually coming off are vanishingly small.
ITT:
“We aren’t the experts in planes and how they work.”
Also
“Very unlikely this comes apart.”
The reason I think that it’s unlikely to be problematic is because the experts quoted in the article said it’s unlikely to be problematic.
I also have a very small amount of knowledge on this and know that planes fly with missing parts/broken things all the time, just like how everything in our car isn’t working 100% of the time either but we still drive it.
While its likely true that the wing panel was both non-critical and secure, I’d be much more worried that if they missed something like that, that they could have missed any number of other things as well. Isn’t there supposed to be some sort of check-list run?
Pilots perform an inspection of the aircraft before every flight. Missing fasteners on the top of the wing would not be visible during a walkaround from the ground.
Planes are allowed to fly with many parts missing. A few missing fasteners on a non structural part is fine, but missing fasteners that the pilots are unaware of is a big issue.
Shouldn’t that inspection include looking at the top of the wing out the windows?
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There isn’t much on top of the wing that is highly critical. Some planes you can’t even see the top from anywhere in the plane too. An actual issue like leaking fluids or damaged flight control surfaces are visible from the bottom. Something like a few missing fasteners really isn’t t that alarming. I’ve flown plenty of times with some missing, sometimes speed taped and sometimes both the first few times I asked the crew chief but eventually I became familiar with where and how many missing weren’t an issue.
I’ve flown plenty of times with some kissing
How about heavy petting?
Does it lead to ducking?
Trouble. And seat wetting.
Only for transonic people.
#MachTuck
Lol, “the Virgin Representative”
At some point, that part was taken off the plane and it was replaced, or maintenance was done on it, or maintenance was done on something underneath it. It was then replaced. There is a documentation trail that says all of this was fully completed. The documentation was signed off on by someone who was qualified in this task, and/ or by a supervisor who checked it off.
If there is no documentation, or if the documentation indicates something was done that was in fact not done, the CAA/ FAA is going to have a big problem with this. They are sort of interested in how maintenance is done and documented. If they didn’t do this right, what else are they/ have they been “pencil whipping?”
I can see a pretty thorough inspection of their maintenance practices and documentation in the near future. If they find a pattern of this, the maintenance gets decertified and the airline can’t fly until they are cleared.
TL;DR Someone dun goofed
There’s a massive failure in maintenance and Operations’ culture here. This isn’t the exact sort of situation where you’d use LOTO, but you need something similar. Lock the engine in the off position until the removed part is properly reinstalled.
I want to call maintenance errors like this rookie… But they really aren’t. There’s plenty of plant incidents where people either don’t have a proper procedure or don’t follow it, and a welder tries to work on a live gas line. Or someone opens a valve without realizing it needs to be closed.
I still say we fine the companies and hold the CEOs personally responsible, because the buck stops there, and these mistakes are more likely to happen in an organization that doesn’t have a robust safety culture.
Seeing how disorganized and chaotic airports are, I’m not surprised.
I sympathise with the airline because it’s always a pain when you’ve nearly completed the flatpack before you realise that one screw is missing. Hopefully it’ll hold together without it.
If Benny Hill wasn’t playing in the background an opportunity was missed.
I knew software companies were offloading QA testing onto their paying users, but who would have guessed that passengers would start playing that role too?
Some big wig had to go to target one day and saw the self checkout line and was like “I have an idea!”
In return, he had a conversation with a big wig from Target where he taught them how many checkout stations you could actually cram into a tiny space.
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Early Access Airplane
