UPS MD-11 crash at SDF

I would put money on them coming up with a fix/inspection and return the fleet to service. Theres not that many flying and it’s the same engines as on the 74 & 76. A fix to keep a couple dozen planes flying is cheaper than replacing with a new type.
 
Skåning said:
I would put money on them coming up with a fix/inspection and return the fleet to service. Theres not that many flying and it’s the same engines as on the 74 & 76. A fix to keep a couple dozen planes flying is cheaper than replacing with a new type.
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I'd agree but doing a thorough inspection of those mounts with any sort of NDT, in this case I'd suspect it would be either x-ray or eddy current is going to be some hard work. Visual inspections aren't appropriate in this situation. So now we have whatever number of airplanes sitting wherever around the world and they're all going to need the outboard engines and pylons removed for access. The DC-10/MD-11 fleet is fairly small and I suspect the availability of the required equipment to accomplish the work is limited. If you're going to take something off an airplane you have to have a place to set it down and store it. I don't know if UPS or Fedex has that capacity. Reminds me of a time when I was working with some folks removing a G-IV rudder, I was driving the forklift and I started asking about where we were going to set it down. We got it worked out but sometimes people get so focused on a task they stop thinking about the big picture.
 
Skåning said:
I would put money on them coming up with a fix/inspection and return the fleet to service. Theres not that many flying and it’s the same engines as on the 74 & 76. A fix to keep a couple dozen planes flying is cheaper than replacing with a new type.
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Is Boeing willing to risk it for so few aircraft? I don't think so.
 
knot4u said:
I'd agree but doing a thorough inspection of those mounts with any sort of NDT, in this case I'd suspect it would be either x-ray or eddy current. Visual inspections aren't appropriate in this situation. So now we have whatever number of airplanes sitting wherever around the world and they're all going to need the outboard engines and pylons removed for access. The DC-10/MD-11 fleet is fairly small and I suspect the availability of the required equipment to accomplish the work is limited. If you're going to take something off an airplane you have to have a place to set it down and store it. I don't know if UPS or Fedex has that capacity. Reminds me of a time when I was working with some folks removing a G-IV rudder, I was driving the forklift and I started asking about where we were going to set it down. We got it worked out but sometimes people get so focused on a task they stop thinking about the big picture.
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How much time and money would Boeing have to spend to create a fix, then sell it to the Feds? Then the MD-11 shifts from being a legacy/acquired problem to a fully-owned Boeing problem - the cost of which to be spread over 55 or so airplanes.
 
CoffeeIcePapers said:
Is Boeing willing to risk it for so few aircraft? I don't think so.
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WacoFan said:
How much time and money would Boeing have to spend to create a fix, then sell it to the Feds? Then the MD-11 shifts from being a legacy/acquired problem to a fully-owned Boeing problem - the cost of which to be spread over 55 or so airplanes.
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I have no idea, I've never worked on a 121 airplane so everything I say is from a fairly ignorant position. But I do know, as a level II NDT inspector for a couple of different companies, that looking at an assembly is sort of general or cursory. There might be something bad happening but until you get to take a look at the individual parts you'll have no idea. I'll admit my experience with NDT was fluorescent penetrant and magnetic particle and I always inspected the parts individually in a regulated dark room with a regulated light and certified eyes, but I was also involved with preparing airplanes for either eddy current or x-ray inspections. Back in the day when we were pulling wings off Lears a mysterious RV/bus with blacked out windows would park somewhere on the ramp, those were the radiologists that were going to x-ray what we'd disassembled. The bus had a lab in it to develop the film and the windows were blacked out because not just as a dark room but also because when they were doing their x-ray stuff they were wearing lead suits and no one was allowed in the hangar so they worked at night and slept during the day. Crossing paths with them was rare, but at the end of a project I might've had a burrito with one of them.
 
Hammertime said:
Did he warm it by just holding it? 🤪
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No, those folks pointed their energy projectors away from themselves. My mom was a radiologist so I was not unfamiliar with the tech. The mysterious part was they always worked in the middle of the night in a blacked out bus and you rarely saw any of them. The one time I shared a burrito with one of them it was a "breakfast" burrito and the sun was just starting to rise in the east as we ate Tommy's Burgers breakfast burritos, I was drinking iced tea and I'm unsure what they were drinking but our days were divergent. He handed me an envelope of x-ray pictures and a sign off that said there were no cracks found and crawled back in the bus. The next day the bus was gone, off to another adventure I suppose.
 
What kind of warning would the pilots have in the cockpit if an engine was ripped off with all its sensors and all?

Because it wouldn't scream engine fire, if there wasn't any just prior to the rapid structural failure. If there wasn't any, of course...
 
Skåning said:
I would put money on them coming up with a fix/inspection and return the fleet to service. Theres not that many flying and it’s the same engines as on the 74 & 76. A fix to keep a couple dozen planes flying is cheaper than replacing with a new type.
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I would also put money on Boeing coming up with a fix.

However, if Boeing calls for a D-check, how long would it take to complete that check for half the fleet? Whatever would fill the gap might just look like normal old school cargo ramp ops.

I bet that UPS and FedEx could get pretty creative with loading and unloading containers. I remember when most of DHL’s container handling in Brussels was on the ramp vs gates. k-loaders and tug trains are pretty cheap.
 
MikeD said:
I’ve gotten UH-60 Blackhawk helos that have been at a rework facility for X check. One came back with a hairline cracked dorsal structural beam that is one of the mounting points for the transmission. Another one had a ceiling throttle quadrant that was so out of rig, it needed to be replaced. Had an A-10 with an intermittent fuel pump come out of depot, along with about 12 other deferred items. All of these aircraft when the situation was brought up to management, had the same response: not part of the Statement of Work. Not in the contracted work. So wasn’t checked or wasn’t discovered, or maybe one or the other.

intermediate and higher (depot) level maintenance is pretty specific on what they work on, based on either the check being performed, the statement of work, or what’s being contracted to be fixed/installed/removed/replaced. At least in the military, they became this way due to abuse by line-level units. Line unit maintenance would send aircraft to depot with all kinds of problems and old parts installed, expecting the depot to repair or replace these items. These were things that were the line unit’s responsibility to repair, but they didnt want to spend the time, parts, or their own allocated dollars on, or have to report longer term down aircraft to higher HQ. Problem was, these extra problems weren’t what the aircraft went to the intermediate or higher depot for. I remember when in country in Qatar, one of the Air Guard C-130 units would send their crappiest C-130s over to the Middle East theatre, so that they’d break there and it would be CENTCOM’s money coffers repairing them, and not the ANGs. Some similar things I see on the civil government side also related to this. And I can’t help but think similar things occur on the pure civilian side.
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Sounds just like the pilots that bring dead batteries from home to swap out with hotel remotes, and do the same same with light bulbs.
 
CFI A&P said:
Sounds just like the pilots that bring dead batteries from home to swap out with hotel remotes, and do the same same with light bulbs.
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I thought I knew the definition of freaking cheap, but that takes the cake!

And yes, it’s very similar. So what happens is, either the depot refuses to repair/replace stuff that is outside their contract, which the line units complain about; since now the depot schedule gets backed up with all their other aircraft they have, becuase it wasn’t planned for. It’s frustrating to see, especially when this crap causes headaches and delays for other units and their planes.
 
NovemberEcho said:
Is this real?
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The stutter of me typing same twice? Yes, but it was supposed to be “the same thing”, but you got the idea.

Yes, pilots are that cheap and have been known to come up creatively ways to save a penny. Take hotel towels one at a time until they have a set, use the coffee pods from hotels at home, and at places where tipping is reimbursed: tip $5 to line service, but claim $10 or $20 on the expense report.
 
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