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.
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.
I imagine a lot of the passengers were pissed off when the flight was cancelled because one of their fellow passengers reported some non-critical bolts were missing.
It’s not like the passenger knew they were non-critical. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted him to stay silent only for it to turn out they were critical. They also wouldn’t unboard and inspect a plane just on the insistence of one passenger, they’d deplane that one passenger if anything. The fact that they did do an additional inspection implies that safe or not, those missing bolts were not noticed in the initial inspection, which leads one to wondering if they missed anything else.
Precisely correct.
I’d have been grateful.
I think it’s entirely reasonable to see something obviously missing on the wing of a plane, even something small, and wonder what else isn’t properly secured. I’m sure a plane with four missing allen head screws on that panel is fine. I wouldn’t fly on it without an assurance that it wasn’t a sign of other poor practices.
First think I look for when I get a system in from a fabricator. Are all the screws on the outside tight and orientationed the same way? If so I am probably going to have a good day. Anybody who takes the effort on something so tiny often is taking the effort in things that do matter.
I would have been fine with not dying in the event it ended up being a real problem. An inconvenience is better to deal with than a plane crash.
Planes have so much redundency that theres a lot that’s uncritical, until suddenly it is critical.
Ideas for a better world #233
Rename your phone hotspot to “I saw a loose bolt on the outside of the plane” and turn it on in the gate waiting area bar.
Hmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.