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American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died

simpleflying.com

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Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died

#121

Post by gazebo2 »

bonesss wrote: post #62
zulgin wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I babysat for a military fighter jet mechanic when I was young, he said when they dismantled and rebuilt planes there was a drawer for all the spare parts that were left over.

It's crazy to think someone with that complex of a job needs to be babysat

Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died

#122

Post by failbuffer »

rhplus wrote: post #34
embedding-shape wrote: post #5

How 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…

> 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…

The mistake of modernity is believing that all tacit knowledge can be reduced to words.

Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died

#123

Post by sokoloff »

buildsjets wrote: post #92
sokoloff wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but you can't fly a plan that 'missing a part' It’s a great story, but I assure you there is a pretty high percentage of airplanes flying with missing parts and systems placarded as INOP in both military and civilian aviation.

Before you can placard something as INOP, you must determine whether the manufacturer and certifying authority have included that part in the Minimum Equipment List or Dispatch Deviation List. Mechanics do both get to determine this at their own discretion. Hence the call to the manufacturer for clarification on the necessity of said pin. To reiterate, you CANNOT fly an airplane with an undocumented missing part. If…

Thanks for asking for my credentials, even though you don’t seem to disagree that lots of aircraft are dispatched with imperfections, so many in fact that there’s a defined process and CFRs to cover it.

Because you asked, I’ve been flying, owning, and overseeing the maintenance of our aircraft for 27 years, including understanding my freedoms and obligations as a pilot and as an operator with regards to the legality of dispatch for imperfect aircraft under both normal operations and under special flight (aka “ferry”) permits. I have spent a lot of time across those three decades both socially and in continuing education courses/seminars with both GA and commercial flight crews and A&P/IAs.

Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died

#124

Post by cucumber3732842 »

balderdash wrote: post #76
rhplus wrote: post #34

Earlier 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…

A former employer owned a combined cycle power plant -when they were having issues (not huge ones, but weird issues or gauge readings) they’d call this old timer and he’d come in walking around ask the operators to make some settings changes and be listening the whole time. And he’d come back and be like “hey the second stage compressor is out of balance” there were all sorts of telematics and manuals, but he could t…

The diagnostic/service steps you have to write to preclude any requirement of skill/experience make it stupid proof waste a lot of labor in the process. Cheaper to have the guy with the skill/experience show up and listen to the thing.

Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died

#126

Post by AshleyGrant »

larrywright wrote: post #113
realo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It takes four years of education before becoming a taxi driver in London I’ve only been to London once, for work. One of the coolest things I did when I was there was to take a black London cab from the financial district to Heathrow when I was leaving. It was probably a 30 minute drive. The driver had been driving a cab since 1982. He told me all about the requirements and training for being a cab driver and a bun…

I've only taken a London cab once. The bastard got lost!

Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died

#127

Post by tedd4u »

barbazoo wrote: post #112
analog31 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in a mid sized engineering organization, and the older engineers (and engineer-adjacent people like me) mentor the younger ones all the time. One thing that can't be codified in procedures is what I call "situational awareness" for lack of a better term. I don't think you can learn how to work in a machine shop safely from a book. Or recognize when a complex design is heading towards being unworkable. In my or…

> I don't think you can learn how to work in a machine shop safely from a book. Or recognize when a complex design is heading towards being unworkable. This strikes me as something one learns very slowly over time. Safety takes time to internalize after close calls or seeing people get hurt. Same with complexity, it takes going through project after project to get a gut feeling for what works and what doesn't.

Parents also develop the ability to see several seconds into the future with regard to their toddlers and small children.

Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died

#128

Post by Xirdus »

clickety_clack wrote: post #84
rhplus wrote: post #34

Earlier 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…

“Not to be negative about experts here, but of all industries, isn’t software development one of the most documented and standard procedure focused of them all? I would hope that someone maintaining a web service 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 and republished to all developers worldwide.” Just making a point t…

The joke about software developers refusing to enter an airplane running their own code dates back at least 30 years.

Software engineering is unique in STEM in that it has nearly zero regulations. Nobody keeps anybody accountable for quality and there are never any legal consequences. No other STEM jobs is like that, usually there are thousand hoops to jump through to do anything non-standard, but in software there's nothing. You can literally go to prison for forging an aircraft maintenance log, but you can forge JIRA logs to your heart's content and never get prosecuted (at most your employer can sue you for damages but that's it).

Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died

#129

Post by nvme0n1p1 »

sokoloff wrote: post #123
buildsjets wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before you can placard something as INOP, you must determine whether the manufacturer and certifying authority have included that part in the Minimum Equipment List or Dispatch Deviation List. Mechanics do both get to determine this at their own discretion. Hence the call to the manufacturer for clarification on the necessity of said pin. To reiterate, you CANNOT fly an airplane with an undocumented missing part. If…

Thanks for asking for my credentials, even though you don’t seem to disagree that lots of aircraft are dispatched with imperfections, so many in fact that there’s a defined process and CFRs to cover it. Because you asked, I’ve been flying, owning, and overseeing the maintenance of our aircraft for 27 years, including understanding my freedoms and obligations as a pilot and as an operator with regards to the legality…

Okay, but did you win the Putnam?

Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died

#130

Post by nvme0n1p1 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #54
zulgin wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For all our sakes, I hope your career never takes you anywhere near an airport.
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