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Mechanic's Mistake Trashes $244 Million Aircraft

Posted by Unknown on from the total-tool-awareness dept.

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."

14 of 428 comments (clear)

  1. Shit Happens by rotorbudd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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"
    1. Re:Shit Happens by WillRobinson · · 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.

    2. Re:Shit Happens by Garybaldy · · Score: 5, Informative

      I remember reading that as i have repeated the story many times. The women on the assembly line could not grasp why you would stick a bolt in upside down. Always being taught to put it in facing down. So if the nut ever came loose the bolt would not come out. Even though as you said the instructions said to put it in upside down.

      The reason being the head of the bolt was shorter and would not interfere with a control cable.

    3. Re:Shit Happens by vlm · · Score: 5, Informative

      She knows clearance issues are why you install a shorter bolt Again, engineering design failed, miserably, so a way to blame the peon.

      If you insist on putting the brake pedal on the right foot and accelerator on the left, it doesn't matter how loudly you blame the driver, its still a design failure.

      This specific incident was hashed out in one of those freshman "intro to engineering ethics" classes I had to take a long time ago. Still remember it. It was a huge design failure, although you could claim it was also a huge management and PR success to put all the blame on some poor chick. Was used as an object lesson for how management picks the winner and loser, sometimes engineering gets it, sometimes operations/factory floor gets it, and part of being an engineer is "toughening up" that you're going to be involved in corporate BS like that, so get used to thinking about it.

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    4. Re:Shit Happens by vlm · · 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.

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    5. Re:Shit Happens by Cid+Highwind · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The airframe is a 40 year old ex-airline 707 with about ten zillion hours on it. A better analogy would be that it's like a $900 car with an $20k Oracle server in the trunk, and frame damage that would cost $2k to fix.

      --
      0 1 - just my two bits
    6. Re:Shit Happens by sqldr · · Score: 5, Funny

      Aircraft aren't cars. The moment you start treating them the same is the moment you sign your own death warrant.

      Tell me about it. Sling-shot launching that Reliant Robin off an aircraft carrier damn nearly killed me!

      --
      I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
  2. Government Contractors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Government contractors. Saving you money like they have never saved it before.

  3. I feel better now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The most I ever cost my employer for a screw up is about $1.1 million.

  4. RFID by Dr_Barnowl · · 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.

    1. Re:RFID by O('_')O_Bush · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There are a lot of misconceptions about how contractors work, because typically, their profit margins are no higher than in other lines of business.

      The government is big on COTS hardware/software, and only turn to contractors for specialized circumstances. Those extra zeros come from the unusual design requirements and low volume orders.

      Take the x thousand dollar hammer example. On the surface, that seems absurd, since one can buy a hammer for less than 10$. But when the hammer is going into space and is made of a difficult to machine titanium alloy (tool steel shatters at cold temperatures), is egonomic even through spacesuit gloves, is lightened without reducing mechanical efficiency (makes sense at an estimated 1000$/pound/launch), and only 10 are made (despite flat machining costs), that X or XX thousand dollar price tag seems very affordable.

      The same thing happens in other areas. I work on submarines and some components use joysticks. Sure, commercial joysticks can be obtained for under 100$, but a waterproofed, pov only motion, high durability (sailors treat equipment like crap, and failure is not an option) piece of clockwork machinery that maybe 50 will be made, you are looking at just shy of XX thousand per.

      --
      while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
  5. I'm not really understanding... by argStyopa · · 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.

    --
    -Styopa
    1. Re:I'm not really understanding... by confused+one · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You've hit the nail on the head with #1 - #3. They totalled a 707 airframe, which is not a $244 million dollar plane. Most of that $244 million cost is what makes a 707 a JSTARS -- the payload. And the payload will probably be salvaged and re-used either to build another JSTARS or as spares to support the existing JSTARS platforms. This is being way over-hyped. Big oops for the contractor -- I wouldn't renew the contract; but, I'm not government.

  6. Forgotten Lesson of WWII by tekrat · · 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.....

    --
    If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.