MAINTENANCE LOG GRATIFYING MOMENT As my retirement date approached,
I would often reflect on my 45-plus years of fixing airplanes. I would think about the good times and the bad times. I would think about some of the friends I made, and some of the friends I lost through aviation. While listening to a retiree being interviewed by a reporter one night about his career, he was asked what his most gratifying moment in his career was. That question prompted me to recall a moment of appreciation in my career that still touches me to this day. I was working as an aircraft mechanic for an FBO (Fixed Base Operator) in the capitol city of a Midwest state. My primary job was to perform inspections and repair of private and corporate aircraft. Four of us took on added responsibility of performing contract maintenance on all the airliners that serviced our city along with FedEx, Emery Air Freight, and just about anything else that dropped in any time of the day or night. The hours were sometimes long, and the working conditions were sometimes bad, but the added overtime money was helpful in raising five kids. This particular evening was
Christmas Eve. I was finishing up a deferral on an American Airlines 727 when the phone rang. It was Northwest — they needed a mechanic ASAP! I told them I was on the airport and would be there is a couple of minutes. Standard procedure with contract maintenance is to call the airline’s maintenance control before you start work on the airplane. The crew had been talking to maintenance control, and they
had a plan for what they wanted me to do. Maintenance control told me the crew reported that they had a warning light come on during engine start. I didn’t quite understand what the light controlled — it had something to do with pressurization, HVAC or bleed air. They added it is not flyable or deferrable in this condition. Since the crew was with the airplane and they could monitor the cockpit action, I just wanted to know what they wanted me to do to fix it. Maintenance control determined that there was a valve in the back of the airplane that was stuck or had a bad connection. They wanted me to find that valve, take the cannon plug off, manually cycle the valve through several times and clean the cannon plug to see it that fixed the discrepancy. If that didn’t work, the valve would need to be replaced and the full load of passengers on board would be stuck on Christmas eve. Maintenance control said they
would fax me down some pictures of the valve and where it was located. Shortly thereafter, the fax machine came to life and started to spit out faxes. That particular fax machine was a little different from most — it had a roll of paper on the back fed into the machine. It would print the page, cut it and send the page out the front. The problem was that the printed page would resume its rolled up format and the ink was easily smudged. I needed to use two hands to read them. It was like reading a 14th century proclamation — “Hear ye, Hear ye”. I looked over my rolls of faxes and headed to the aircraft. When I entered the cabin door, the captain
BY JOHN MULLINS
came out of the cockpit. He quickly shook my hand and introduced himself. He asked me my name and from then on always called me by name in any conversation we had like, “Would you like a Coke John?” or “What is maintenance control telling you John?” I guess he thought expressing the friendship role would encourage me to work faster, but it was Christmas eve and I’m the father of five, so I still had a bicycle or a big wheel or an easy bake oven or something else to put together yet that night, so I wanted out of there as soon as possible as well.
I told him that I needed to get to a shutoff valve in the back of the airplane. The access was through the cabin to a door in the back of the airplane. On a DC 9 this is also an emergency exit. Since the problem appeared on engine start, the passengers were all still on board waiting for me to see if I could make it work. A quick scan of the passengers showed the desperate looks of stranded holiday travelers and they looked to me as their savior. I am not one that enjoys being the center of attention, so I looked down as I walked to the back of the airplane. I looked up once and noticed the most beautiful young lady sitting in 12C. I slowed my pace a bit to lengthen my observation time but once past, I regained my gait and refocused on the task ahead. Having been in this area of a DC 9 before, I knew three things — it was going to be dark, it was going to be cold and above all, it was going to be noisy. So before I opened the door I put in some ear plugs. After all — safety first. Upon entering the work area, I
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DOMmagazine.com | dec 2019 jan 2020
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