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Mechanic's Mistake Trashes $244 Million Aircraft
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."
I've been an A&P for over 35 years and I've seen worse.
(by pilots and mechanics)
A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"
Blame teh gubment in 3... 2... 1...
Government contractors. Saving you money like they have never saved it before.
blame "a contractor".
"What Are They Gonna Do When Were All Using Freenet"
The most I ever cost my employer for a screw up is about $1.1 million.
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.
That would explain a lot
It's all ball bearings these days.
244 million? Isn't that minuscule? CEOs regularly crash the stock market. But at least they take responsibility! Like... becoming CEO somewhere else?
Gotta love affirmative action and workplace diversity! Who cares if they're not actually the best engineers and mechanics!
http://careers.northropgrumman.com/diversity.html
Que the contractor vs. organic AF maintenance argument. And "blame the contractor" is always a fun game.
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.
-Styopa
Sucks to be that guy.
$25 million? It's not as if they had to repair the toilets or anything . . .
So this is a plane that might get, you know, shot at? In a war or something? And it can't handle two little holes, or be repaired? Sounds like a design flaw to me.
You lost an airframe. A significant fraction of that $244 million is payload and equipment that will be recovered and used as "spare parts" to maintain other JSTARS aircraft. The airframe is all that was lost. The airframe is a commercial 707 derivative. It's not an $244 million aircraft, it's a tricked out $5 million dollar aircraft. The issue, now, is replacing the system -- which means assembling another JSTARS. Given typical government contracting practices that will cost another $325 million (inflation adjusted from initial cost of $244 million in 1998).
appeared...sAying also dead, its Are you 4 NIGGER
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At least he chose to study engineering and not medicine.
This isn't a loss at all. This is a justification for more spending. At the top of the power pyramid, it doesn't matter where the money comes from, or even whether you "succeed" or "fail". What matters is that the money passes through your hands, giving you a chance to exploit that cash flow for personal gain.
Reminds me of another tool control issue that cost the AF a KC135 at Tinker AFB a few years ago.
Basic gist was he used a homemade pressure gauge to test the integrity of the airframe post depot maintenance. The pressure relief valves had be sealed up during PDM and never reactivated. The technicians gauge had no peg so he failed to notice when the needle began its second trip.
Needless to say the effects where impressive. Total write-off of the aircraft.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpGF3dVdj14
If he were a banker he'd get a bonus ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Simply weight the toolbox on the way out and again on the way back in.
This is for what the 'epic' in 'epic fail' was invented.
Acronym brought to life.
At some point it would seem the complexity of our military hardware is a hindrance more than a help. what if it had been a bullet instead of a mistake? the plane is operable but takes $25 million in repairs and likely weeks (months?) to do so. or what if you need to maintain these at less then optimal conditions. your mechanics are slammed and it needs to get back in the air. should such a small thing permanently ground your aircraft?
things like this make me think that if we were in a real prolonged WW3 type theater that our overly sophisticated military would begin to fail under pressures of less than optimal conditions.
It is ass-covering of the lowest order to blame a lowly mechanic for what is obviously a design flaw. A simple sensor to monitor the presence of a plug in order to save a 244 million dollar craft is not too much to expect from the maker. Someone high should be fired, but they will throw the poor mechanic under the bus and feel competent and effective.
E Proelio Veritas.
And what are the costs for the Generals's mistakes?
Some notes worth mentioning:
The plug that was left in the aircraft occured when the plane was in Depot-level maintenance. 99% of depot level work is performed by civilians. As a matter of fact, no military service members perform any depot level maintenance.
At best there may be a few officers or senior enlisted working at the factory to serve as liasons or QA type billets. They're few and far between.
It's not to say that the contractors shouldn't be held accountable, especially consider how long it takes for the depot guys to do anything. In my experiance (active duty military aviation at the o-level (squadron level)) It takes depot to 2 days (about 6 ten-hour shifts with overlap) to remove and replace a rotary powerplant, when it would take one my shops only one shift from start to finish.
These contractors USED to be active duty military. They USED to have a work ethic. But something happens when you go civilian contractor....
Well, there's your problem.
I am officially gone from
Sounds to me like a great case for the military NOT subcontracting out every single task to some private company which they have little, if any, control over.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Just guessing the contract for the aircraft maintenance was won by the lowest bidder....you get what you pay for.
jstars is more of a command and control or forward air controller (it's mostly ground scanning and targeting, not spying?)
To someone who used to be in military aviation, this is kind of a non-story. It is a rare and undesirable incident but hardly unheard of, except that tool control is very good in military aviation now. You have the mechanics, then you have the Quality Control checkers, then eventually you have the aircrew doing their pre-flight inspection. Most of the time mistakes get caught along the way, very occasionally they don't. Luckily in this case no one got hurt and hopefully the contractor reimburses the government for some of the loss (not $244 million, as other posters have pointed out). It is human error, same as what causes most aircraft accidents in the air and on the ground. When you work with $244 million equipment which flies through the air you will suffer losses sometimes. It's like owning a $100,000 car -- if you drive it on the street you are taking the chance of wrecking it. And $244 M doesn't sound like all that much -- about the same as a new Boeing 777 according to the Boeing price list (http://www.boeing.com/commercial/prices/).
If a forgotten scissor can happen in cardiology it can happen everywhere
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
If I remember Srimati teacher correctly, apparently a whole kingdom was lost because some cobbler missed nailing one nail in the shoe of one horse. I, along with rest of the class, had actually memorized the entire report of the investigation committee. We delivered the report to an assembly of interested parties ( Mohan master accompanied us on the xylaphone) on the annual day of the Mahatma Gandhi Elementary. From the standing ovation we got, I assume our report was spot on and was accepted with great appreciation.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Moved in to a new house. Week later had sewage backup in the bathtubs. Private industry subcontractor to a private industry contractor had left waste water line blocking test plugs in the line after it was pressure tested for the government inspector. What a mess once the plugs were pulled.
So stuff happens and everybody can do it.
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.....
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Well, it sure wasn't me .
I just get to pay for it.
And for bonuses for the incompetents that created the mess.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
How about doing what every handyman does in his garage: hanging the tools on a board and tracing an outline of all of them.
this contractor is basically screwed now. That said, I don't know a single contractor, company or business that's not run like this. The company that cuts the most corners gets the contract when they underbid. Sometimes that company's dumb luck launches them to success, and somethings this happens.
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My car tells me if I leave the fuel cap off, but a multi-hundred-million $ plane has nothing that can tell in advance if there is a venting problem with a fuel tank? Sorry, but WTF?! I'm with others too- I believe the costs are being blown out of proportion by the Air Force, and this aircraft is obviously impractical for "combat" conditions where it may need to be field serviced under less-than-ideal conditions. Another waste of taxpayer money.
If you read the actual congressional testimony, you would have seen that Schwartz didn't say that it wasn't repairable for ~$25M, which is 10% of the cost of the whole system, he bemoaned his budget constraints, and said they wouldn't repair it as an example answer to the question "Is there any sacrifice you're seeing in ISR...?". Also note that they're only not repairing *the platform*.
The title of the press release from the Public Affairs office more or less says it all: "Air Force Strategic Choices and Budget Priorities Brief at the Pentagon".
-- Terry
"How extensive? 25 million dollars worth of extensive."
"has damaged a $244 million aircraft beyond repair."
get your damn story right, is it going to take 25 million to hose out the inside of this wing, or is this mistake going to cost us 244 million to replace? The whole situation sounds over dramatic and blown out of proportion anyway.
2009?!!!
Old news is Old.
Come on, this is a new low, even for slashdot!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Sure. Sloppy, cheesy employment. Cost-cutting. Lowest-bid suppliers. Rampant graft and cronyism. A cultural pool crumbling inder the feet of education - technical education being very hard hit. Etc. and so on.
And it's all the mechanic's fault? It's really, really much more serious than that.
A $244 million plane has $25 million dollars damage. So someone decides it's better to go buy a replacement plane at $244 million instead of $25 million (to be extracted from the contractor's insurance company) to fix the damage?
Where are the Republicans when you need them? Out campaigning? Oh wait, they're on the golf course with the Northrop Grumman executives.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
How the hell are we supposed to pad our Pentagon slush fund if you guys keep calling out our shenanigans. Due to increased legislative oversight, we've been overestimating funds on other projects, and funneling the excess into our black budget. You guys really believe we're paying $700 on a toilet seat? That is old school. We've moved on to a more distributed approach. At every opportunity, we pad our estimates. Why don't you watch the Kardashians on the TV? Watch some pro football? The super bowl is almost here! Quit paying attention to our business.
Should the company of the mechanic fire him? Hell no! They just gave him $25 million worth of training!
The accident occurred March 13th 2009, but the news is the Air Force accident investigative board’s report on the incident, including photographs, which is only recently available.
Um, suppose there was a war and this thing dodged some SAMs and return to base with some shrapnel holes from a near miss? Would they write the whole thing off? There has been more than one time in history when a "platform" has come under fire -- the RB-47 incident, the KAL Flight 7 matter where a civilian jet was attacked under the mistaken belief that it was a Cobra Ball or a Rivet Joint, and so on. Or is the assumption that if one of these things is attacked that it ain't coming home so why bother?
I have worked both in military aviation and civilian aviation.
First, tool control. When working in a military environment, tool control is simple. Everything gets checked out after inspecting the tool / toolbox and tools to make sure they are all there and not broken. Then when the shift is over, the tools are returned and inspected. Anything left on the plane is documented. If the contractor left something in the wing that caused damage, then they are financially liable. Period.
Second, 25 million to fix that, I doubt very much. I worked on a DC-8 that had both wing ends ripped right off, from the #1 engine outboard and the #4 engine outboard. It didn't cost 25 million to fix that. I would be willing to bet that any repair station would do the job for 2.5 million and make out like bandits.
But if you really look at what the alleged cause was, why was it not caught long before this? Whenever there is depot level maintenance done on a military aircraft, there is a whole process of inspection that take place before it is accepted for active duty. The fuel system in the number 2 tank would have been used several times before this incident both in fueling and in normal burn thru the engines. A blocked vent would have cause problems long before this. I suspect there was another malfunction that caused all the fuel to be dumped into the #2 tank instead of distributed to all the tanks.
. . . these are not the tools you are looking for.
What's next Slashdot? The moon landings were faked? JFK conspiracies? The sinking of the Maine?
There's an old saying I remember from my aircraft maintenance days - Aircraft are designed by people with a PhD, built by people with a BS degree, and maintained by people with a GED.
"Trashing," meaning "may as well throw it away," implies totally destroying the aircraft.
This incident did damage of about 10% of the aircraft's value, making it an easy fix.
What's with all the sensationalist headlines lately?
About 11 years ago, I had an old car of mine serviced, and for whatever reason, the next day after getting it back I decided to pop the hood ("bonnet" for you UK'ers). There was the mechanics hammer just sitting on the air filter cover. I'm not even sure what he needed a hammer for. Unlike this story though, I lucked out and no damage occurred, except my confidence in that car shop.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
The wing command would love to takes these out of service and replace them with the latest and greatest thing. As long as they're functional it's difficult to get some of the congress-allocated AF pie to do this. Accidents like this move them closer to new programs and new commands which is what these guys live for.
Consider who is repairing commercial jet liners, companies like Jet Blue have their repairs done in El Salvador, scary huh?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39383369/ns/travel/t/outsourcing-safety-airplane-repairs-move-unregulated-foreign-shops/#.TygM_aua46k
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
..someone once crashed an expensive aircraft. It was very regrettable and the survivors who were responsible for it, felt bad.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Tennessee Air National Guard totalled a C141, but at least it was on the ground when the wing ruptured.
http://www.airliners.net/photo/209303/
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
This is why we have managers. THEY are responsible setting up systems that eliminates simple human mistakes. That's why managers earn 10-fold the average workers salary. They have the responsibility. A mechanic is merely a biological robot tool in this context. The story heading should be "A bunch of managers could not manage to manage what they were paid to manage, tries to blame someone else"
Can I light a sig ?
I was the Quality Assurance Officer in the maintenance department of the largest helicopter squadron in the Marine Corps, so allow me to pass along a few notes on military aircraft maintenance procedures and the cost accounting of mishaps.
Everything in the maintenance department is done by checklists and written procedures because people make mistakes; written instructions help minimize those mistakes as long as the procedures are followed. In addition to the written instructions, there are at least two levels of QA: Collateral duty inspectors, who are more senior mechanics who check the work was done right, and Quality Assurance representatives, who are still more senior and check the work after the first inspection (they are prohibited from watching the work to ensure they look at each job with no preconceptions). Given the insanely complex maintenance that goes into these machines, this setup is a marvel of efficiency and effectiveness. (Evidenced by the low number of mishaps attributed to maintenance errors.)
RFID tool control works just great until the computer loses power. A lot of maintenance is done in very austere environments and under combat conditions. The current tool control systems are designed to work when the lights are out and the world has gone to hell in a hand basket. If your tool control idea won't survive incoming fire, it's not robust enough.
The bottom line to both of these is that taking shortcuts bypasses the system that prevents these mishaps. Follow the procedures and things will be fine 99.9% of the time.
As regards accounting, when an aircraft sustains more than $2 million in damage (used to be $1 million), it is considered a Class A mishap, which is the same classification for a mishap resulting in total loss of the airframe or the loss of life. From that point of view, $25 million is a total loss. Add in the factors of old airframe, hard to get parts, etc. and you see why this is considered a total loss. If you don't like it, blame the Congresscritters who make the laws, not the guys who live under those laws.
45 minutes of previously unknown audio tape discovered this week:
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/207343-newly-discovered-jfk-assassination-tapes-made-public
Is that what it's called in surgery too? On-topic: seems if this could be an issue maybe a pressure senor in the tank (or a strain gauge on the tank) is a good idea.
Forgive the rant, but:
It is not a "spy" plane, it is a "surveillance" plane. Ever since the 2001 Hainan Island incident this mistake has really irked me. The Chinese used it as a rhetorical club to beat us with when GWB chickened out and let them chop up our plane and imprison our crew.
A "spy" plane would be one that is designed/intended to escape detection and/or interception while conducting surveillance in places it has no right to be (such as the U2 and SR-71 or the Global Hawk). During the cold war, the Soviet Union consistently protested our overflights of their territory with the U2 and SR71, and sought (and once succeeded) to shoot them down, as was their right. Those were "spy" planes, and Francis Gary Powers was, technically, a "spy."
The JSTARS E-8 and the Hainan EP-3E are both military versions of the Boeing 707 -- they aren't designed to hide from or evade anyone trying to see and/or catch them. They are big obvious platforms that fly in neutral territory (or over an actively declared battle zone when we have air dominance) and provide surveillance and other capability. They aren't hiding or trying to deceive anyone.
I'm a lawyer with excellent karma. Something's gotta be wrong.
Complex human activities always involve errors. No matter how hard we try or how perfect the effort there will always be screwups. Perhaps there is a more basic error in allowing such bleeding edge technology being deployed in the first place. this wonderful electronic technology can probaly be made more robust, miniturized and produced at very low cost if allowed to mature before military use. Today's electronic miracle tends to be tomorrow's mundane and common product.
Big deal :)
In Sweden, the maintenance crew of a nuclear reactor (Ringhals) forgot a wrench inside the reactor. It didn't start, and when they investigated why, they found the tool.
http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/karnkraft/article255036.ece
And, why do we need $244MM aircraft, exactly...?
I don't respond to AC's.
Why would a plane with so much advanced electronics on board not have a check system or pre-flight checklist item to look for such an installed plug. Supposed a swarm of bees had built a nest in there and blocked it instead of the mechanic's error?
If something as simple as a plugged vent can cause complete and catastrophic damage to the craft then there needs to be pre/in flight monitoring of that system. Seems a simple pressure gauge in the tank would have prevented this situation from becoming life threatening.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Now, collect the $ from the contractor.
There is a benefit to putting in the bolts the way the worker was taught to do it. It is also the standard way.
There are no standards in aircraft design, only general guidelines. If the instructions said to install the bolt one way, the assembly workers should have been thoroughly trained to do it *exactly* that way. Creativity in assembling planes kills people.
The engineers who design a plane are working under a strict constraint to make everything as strong as needed while being as lightweight as possible. It's not their job to anticipate any convoluted reasoning an assembly line worker may have. The engineer must assume that the workers will be trained well enough to follow correctly all the procedures.
If someone cannot control his or her creativity enough to follow instructions, he or she should not be working at an assembly line.
When people must follow instructions, they should NEVER, under any circumstances, try to outguess the procedures. If they have any doubt, they should ask someone and, whenever applicable, have their observations brought to the attention of the engineers. I have been an engineer working at design tasks for over 30 years, and have received many good contributions from people who operate the systems I have designed. Constructive criticism is always welcome.
It's quite possible that an engineer may not have realized some practical detail of the design. But people who assemble equipment like aircraft on which people's lives may depend should not have the presumption to try to "improve" the design on their own initiative.
They probably did account for all the tools; just not all the consumables, like plugs, or in the case of satellites: rags.
Sorry.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Since the Air Force has dozens of spares of this particular airframe, it is more economical to pull a newer one out of storage and move all the stuff that makes a JSTAR a JSTAR to a new plane.
JSTARS is not built on the C-135 airframe, exactly, but they share a common ancestor. JSTARS aircraft were built on a number of different commercially available used Boeing 707 variants. Essentially, each one was a custom installation. Air Mobility Command could not spare any viable KC-135 airframes for JSTARS, as they needed every refueler they could manage to maintain the fleet to meet unified command requirements. The other special purpose EC/RC/OC-135s were not available either, as their missions took precedence over the JSTARS effort.
The JSTARS program likely will not receive adequate funds to purchase another airframe and integrate the equipment. It's more likely that the JSTARS equipment and viable airframe parts form this aircraft will be salvaged for spares to extend the lives of the remaining JSTARS aircraft. Other platforms are more likely to be funded to absorb portions of the JSTARS capability. This decision will be driven by high and growing supportability costs for JSTARS.
Invenio via vel creo
Looking at the pictures, several ribs were completely busted off of the spar, as well as several bulkheads breached.
Pictures Damage10 thru Damage15 shows the bottom flange of the spar completely broken away, a testament to strengths of the bolts attached. This could also be indicative of accumulated metal fatigue from many flight hours.
Never the less, the amount of over-pressure must have been astounding.
The interesting thing is that the plane took off, presumably with this tank full, and it was re-fueled in-flight.
So the questions that come to mind are,
1) How did this not happen during ground fueling? Smaller pipes I presume
2) Why didn't the tanker's back pressure sensor shut down the flow?
Boeing has already suggested a same or lower cost solution based on the 737, which is dramatically more fuel efficient.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
So the questions that come to mind are,
1) How did this not happen during ground fueling? Smaller pipes I presume
My guess would be lower atmospheric pressure due to being a few thousand feet up while refueling in-flight.
Blaming everything on the CRA is 99% right wing propaganda and a lie.
Banks don't give out enormous bonuses to brokers for loans that they "have to give out". If that were the case, they would make it an arduous bureaucratic process which the customers have to navigate and push themselves. Banks give out enormous bonuses for loans which make them tons of money, this quarter. And that's what they did.
And the CRA doesn't in any case force subprime loans, and the worst subprime offenders were not even subject to CRA. And there was a huge bubble in commercial property lending which is not part of CRA either. And there is clear evidence 'redlining' of minority borrowers to bad (==profitable to the bank) loan terms when the borrowers could have qualified for better, conventional loans (which were less profitable).
The CRA was around for twenty/thirty years and never caused any huge systematic effect.
The issue is that REPLACEMENT cost is not the same thing as VALUE.
Even if the thing cost $224 million new, or costs $224 million to replace, that doesn't mean that the one that broke is worth $224 million.
The options are:
- Buy a new one for $224 million
- Repair this one for $25 million
- Scrap this one and get along with one less.
If you're in a situation where you now have 29 working models of them but you only use 15 at a time, paying $25 million to get back up to 30 of them doesn't make any sense.
Especially if you're going to replace all 30 with the next generation of equipment in the near future.
paintball
(just kidding)
If one guy's mistake causes a major loss, it is not that guy's fault. The real problem is in the system that allows one guy's mistake to fall through without a second guy catching it. If there is a simple error that causes a 25 megabuck loss, you set up a system that double and triple checks for that error.
I'd be seriously pissed if I had to drive a car where depressing accelerator and brake caused the accelerator command to be overridden.
Heh, something like that is actually a safety feature in some cars already, and They(TM) are considering making it mandatory. Accelerator override: Where if you press the brake, it cancels the accelerator. This is done because there are legit scenarios where the accelerator pedal can get suck. The big one is floor-mat-stuck-under-the-pedal. People panic and try to use the brakes to stop the car, and that's not always as effected as one would like.
Whether or not it's worth the costs in loss of control you describe, I dunno.
Semi-related: It occurs to me that if you really need that extra margin while changing lanes, you're probabbly driving inappropriately for a public road.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Okay, here's one example of how RFID would work.
All all the tools have a RFID tag on them, the tool box has a RFID reader. If a tool isn't there, it lets you know.
Change the toolbox to a tool truck, or whatever they use for doing routine maintenance during fuel ups.
Better use for them then tagging people, for sure.
Be seeing you...
Doesn't anyone else find it ironic that a $244 million warplane can be crippled by a 10-cent (or whatever) plug? Proving once again that in war humans properly organized and led beat machines every time. Like in Vietnam.
What, you think this was MY fault? Well screw you guys I'm going home.
The ones who came up with the maintenance schedule and strategy deserve blame for allowing a situation where a single individual's error can result in this much damage.
I think that the emergency brake sensor should be used as the override.
Again, it's a panic thing. People panic and try to use the (regular) brakes to stop the car. There are already ways to recover from a stuck accelerator: "Shift to neutral" and "turn ignition switch to OFF" being the most obvious. But when people are panicked because their car is accelerating out of control, they don't think clearly.
Plus, I think using the emergency brake would be a poor idea. The e-brake is typically the rear wheels only and lacks anti-lock; if it's the foot pedal variety it also typically lacks any fine control. That's a recipe for rear wheel lock-up, fish tailing, and loss of control.
It occurs to me that if you really need that extra margin while changing lanes, you're probabbly driving inappropriately for a public road.
sometimes you don't have a choice where you live and how dense the traffic is. You can either get where you want to, or you won't ever get to where you're going...
You're still probably driving inappropriately. The idea that you'll never get there because you needed to shave tens of microseconds for a lane change is... unlikely. And, ironically, people with that attitude are actually a big part of the traffic problem. If people drove properly everyone would get there faster. (See: http://trafficwaves.org/) But too many people either don't understand or don't care. Tragedy of the commons.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
This happened in 2009...
Oops!
The contractor was a dog outfit, they didn't follow the TSO PERIOD. That's what happens when jobs are contracted on competitive bid. companies hire cheap labor and cut corners everywhere. That is the way most of our aircraft maintenance is going, south literally, Mexico, South America, China. I have been working on aircraft for 27 years 4 in the USMC F/A18, 12 years at Douglas and 11years at a heavy maintenance C-check facility. As a certified mechanic you call the shots not the boss or the company. You take the time to do it right no matter how long it takes, your ass is on the line.You put the airplane together the way the print, the AD, EO, AO, TSO, STC or whatever the legal document you are using says. If there is a question, request an engineer. Shit happens because people think they know better when they don't. It's good to question, but don't just make changes because you think its not right. We have made some remarkable repairs on aircraft, fabricating parts from scratch plus our company has an extensive supply of parts in Mojave. If an aircraft does not have a good inspection process in place, and mechanics are discouraged from changing parts, the airplane will fall apart. Spare parts need to have good history of serviceability to be airworthy. There are many old airplanes still in good shape because they are properly cared for.
We are talking about sensing whether or not a plug is present that can destroy the airplane if it is present at the wrong time. More care is taken in sensing on your car. I don't know why people have so hard a time in understanding this. It would be a simple proximity sensor tied into a system that no doubt already exists.
It absolutely occurred for careless handling of contractor.So they are accountable for this accident. currency exchange