This has to tick a few off! Anyone see the ABC's news bit last night? All these cancellations are due to loom clamp spacing on elec. harnesses in a wheel well compartment. Spacing is suppose to be 1", but are spaced at 1 1/4". So some bone head is grounding all the MD-80's untill they get it fixed. We're talking about a 1/4" inch here people!! I hardly doubt a quarter inch is gonna cause excessive vibration in the electrical harness to cause a chaff and short out, causing an inflight disaster. This sure could have been handled better and in a timelier fashion that all at once. Talk about putting people out on a limb and then cutting it off![:@]
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"If we don't end war, war will end us!"
H.G. Wells 1935
Coming from an aviation background I can say that while this precaution may seem extreme or even silly there's almost certainly a precedent that made the policy necessary. It takes surprisingly little to make something that big roll over and crash, personally I like to err to the side of caution when it comes to the physical condition of something that could drop me from 35K feet. A few years ago an Alaska Airlines plane crashed because the maintenence folks waited just a fraction too long to grease a small nut on the screw that controlls the attitude of thestabilator on the tail, when they grounded their fleet and inspected the tails more than half had significant to dangerous wear on the same part because they hadn't been greased often enough, they now grease them after every flight.
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Kevin Haendiges
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I think we'll hear more about this. By all means if this was necessary to protect public safety, it needed to be done. If this is a grand standing feat to give pay-back for the chastizement or embarrassment about the Southwest Airlines crack inspection procedure that didn't get done, that is not good and should be soundly punished (heads rolling at FAA). My guess is that this didn't need to be handled in this manner. How long have MD-80s been flying (20 years?), how long has this directive been out there, why did it have to be done in this disruptive manner rather than in a time-phased manner? Questions that need to be answered, I'm thinking.
the questions I have is this is affecting more than just one airline company,that said,the MD-80's have been out for awhile. Does this mean that all of the other airline companies affected following the same laxy dazy guidelines? If so, we need to ground the whole fleet of planes. If not, is this a case from the factory of MD-80's that is now just coming to light?, If so, then where the heck have our safety inspectors been?
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"If we don't end war, war will end us!"
H.G. Wells 1935
I work in construction, 1/4 in itself isnt much but if you cheat something by that much every time you wind up making it much larger than that.For instance from the first to the second clamp you have 1 1/4 inches.From the first to the 3rd you wind up with 2 1/2.First to the fourth 3 3/4.By the time you hit the fifth youve gained an entire inch from the first clamp to where its placed so you would actually be missing one entire clamp every five inches or so.Stretch that out over the length of a jet and see how many clamps you wind up missing.
Sorry for the delay Canuck, I was just leavin for Canada when I posted that.
I have been post curing wind turbine blades the last month in my new job, Ill use it as an example.We run thermocouplers every 40 inches to moniter the temperature, these all run into one big controller box that moniters and runs the entireprocess.Normally its not a problem.
The other day though another crew started grinding to do repairs on the outside of the blade while we were curing the inside repairs.Just the vibration from the grinder alone raised hell with all of our wires, gave us bad readings, affected the control box and made for a very bad day for us.
Like I said, your losing a clamp every 5 inches thats holding the wiring harnesses for everything from controlling to landingto navigating the plane.Imagine how bad the vibration is on these wires.Id say it could be a serious problem if not adressed, isnt it better to have a couple days of inconvienece then a couple hundred dead bodies before worrying about it?
I heard that it was some goober Congressman raking the FAA over the coals about inspections, so the FAA responded, "Oh, you want inspections? OK. We'll have some inspections."
Was it really necessary to ground the whole fleet?
No, it was a Govt. agency flexing their bureaucratic muscles.
flight cancelations.........
