A buddy of mine is the son of a United Airlines mechanic who was fairly high up in the organization. When his dad passed United gave him a stack of blank wax tickets. His son could write the destination on them and fly for free. Near the end of the stack they were largely ornamental as he could just tell them where he wanted to go and they would print a proper ticket. But still, it was a rather classy way to honor his father.
American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died
51–60 of 175 posts
Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
> unenumerable amount of knowledge, tips and experience silently disappears Not to be negative about experts here, but of all industries, isn’t airline maintenance one of the most documented and standard procedure focused of them all? I would hope that someone maintaining a 777 doesn’t have to remember certain tricks or tips outside of what the manuals say, and when mistakes are found, they’d be noted, investigated a…
Well ... It takes four years of education before becoming a taxi driver in London: https://thetaxi.academy/ It takes also many years of study before they will let you touch any living person with your scalpel, and then many years of apprenticeship with actual surgeons when you do touch people with your tools. I can imagine maintaining a big jumbo jet also requires some specialized practical knowledge you cannot acqui…
There are detailed step-by-step instruction cards (task cards) for every single maintenance operation on an airplane. Nobody is reinventing the wheel, they’re carefully following predetermined procedures. Someone has to figure out which maintenance procedures need to happen, but the work itself is laid out for you step by step.
Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died
#53How many apprentices did this guy managed to put through the pipeline before his career was over? It always shocks me how low this number tends to be for highly skilled craftsmen. They spend their century maintaining/creating some of the best work on the planet but when they disappear, unenumerable amount of knowledge, tips and experience silently disappears as quickly as it was gained, and it's sad to observe every…
> They spend their century maintaining/creating some of the best work on the planet but when they disappear, unenumerable amount of knowledge, tips and experience silently disappears as quickly as it was gained, and it's sad to observe every single time.
Every single possible airplane maintenance operation is detailed on task cards that mechanics follow. Probably there is some small amount of tribal knowledge, but virtually everything is documented with step-by-step procedures, which includes the tools you need, every step, all torque values, etc.
It’s not like being an electrician or pipefitter where you have to make your pipe or conduit get from point A to point B by following the construction code, airplane safety is crucial enough that documenting and standardizing airplane maintenance was done long ago.
Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
> unenumerable amount of knowledge, tips and experience silently disappears Not to be negative about experts here, but of all industries, isn’t airline maintenance one of the most documented and standard procedure focused of them all? I would hope that someone maintaining a 777 doesn’t have to remember certain tricks or tips outside of what the manuals say, and when mistakes are found, they’d be noted, investigated a…
There is a famous story about how an F16 got grounded because an half inch metal pin was missing from the cockpit canopy. Nobody knew what the pin did or if it was even necessary but you can't fly a plan that 'missing a part'. After several days of being grounded they finally reached out to a guy who had retired 20 years ago who told them the pin was a part of a analogue sensor that had been replaced nearly 30 years…
> Even if stuff is written down you have to know where to look.
That's one of the things I love about AI: It's excellent at figuring out where to look, because it can digest so many documents so much faster than a person.
Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died
#55[flagged]
Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but the incredible skilledness in a single craft, which we are discussing here, doesn't happen at a societal level. That is the hard work of an individual and has always been.
At the societal level it's a numbers game. These people are the end of a very long tail. If you reduce the area under the curve you also reduce the long tail.
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Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died
#57If you're interested in commercial aircraft and their maintenance process, check out Stig Shift on YouTube. He's another AA mechanic based in LAX, and makes interesting videos with some technical deep dives interspersed with planespotting.
Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
> unenumerable amount of knowledge, tips and experience silently disappears Not to be negative about experts here, but of all industries, isn’t airline maintenance one of the most documented and standard procedure focused of them all? I would hope that someone maintaining a 777 doesn’t have to remember certain tricks or tips outside of what the manuals say, and when mistakes are found, they’d be noted, investigated a…
There is a famous story about how an F16 got grounded because an half inch metal pin was missing from the cockpit canopy. Nobody knew what the pin did or if it was even necessary but you can't fly a plan that 'missing a part'. After several days of being grounded they finally reached out to a guy who had retired 20 years ago who told them the pin was a part of a analogue sensor that had been replaced nearly 30 years…
Chesterton's fence is strong with this one
Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died
#59How many apprentices did this guy managed to put through the pipeline before his career was over? It always shocks me how low this number tends to be for highly skilled craftsmen. They spend their century maintaining/creating some of the best work on the planet but when they disappear, unenumerable amount of knowledge, tips and experience silently disappears as quickly as it was gained, and it's sad to observe every…
Be the change you wish to see in the world!
Hopefully you are apprenticing many junior engineers!
Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
None of those industries create the material or social plenty that make us all richer. You cannot eat real estate or stock options, the medical industry is a drag on us all though obviously you can cherry pick examples where things don't look perverse.
Am I being trolled? People live in buildings developed by real estate development companies, people take life saving and life extending medicines made by pharmaceutical companies, and people communicate and navigate using the electronics made by tech companies. The things they create (and not exclusively they, obviously the country as a whole creates too) directly lead to the share price increases and dividends that…
>Am I being trolled? People live in buildings developed by real estate development companies, people take life saving and life extending medicines made by pharmaceutical companies, and people communicate and navigate using the electronics made by tech companies.
When you look at indoor square footage per capita (so like include the average HNer's share of the Starbucks and Whole Foods they patronize) and square footage and compare that to unit development trends and look at the costs it looks like we're just building bigger boxes rather than more of them. Basically the same story of the winners carrying the average that you see in every other market segment. Real estate development is probably one of the best market segments that illustrates the "K shaped economy".
Likewise with medical. It's probably a fools errand to try and figure out whether wiping the elderly's asses is over sold or drugs are over sold and both sides claim they're creating Real Value (TM) and making people's lives better but when you zoom out and look at how much we pay for all that it's clear that something is very wrong and it's a monetary drag on us that prevents us from being to spend our money on hookers and blow and Big Macs (or whatever it is that we want to spend out money on).
I didn't mention the tech industry in my quip because it makes things people elect to use voluntarily (to an extent, try not having an email these days) rather than structures itself to essentially compel more money to be spent within it like the industries within real estate development and medical do.