On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 9:59 AM, Fernando Cassia <[email protected]> wrote:
> FAA gave Boeing and the airlines THREE YEARS to install two light > bulbs for extra safety... > > "In March 2011, the Federal Aviation Administration in the United > States released an airworthiness directive requiring all Boeing 737 > aircraft from −100 to −500 models to be fitted with two additional > cockpit warning lights. These would indicate problems with take-off > configuration or pressurization. Aircraft on the United States civil > register were required to have the additional lights by 14 March 2014" > For starters, you are understating the actual work included (for at least some planes it's more than just 2 lights), but lets let that one slide... If you actually read the Airwirthiness directive, you'll see it states : *Boeing Alert Service Bulletin 737-31A1325, dated January 11, 2010, specifies an estimate of * *32.5 work-hours to do the modification. Continental declared that it has historically found that * *Boeing estimates given in service bulletins are unachievable. Continental believed it would be * *possible to accomplish the modification in approximately 50 work hours, if the modification * *is done during a heavy maintenance visit.* 40+ hours, times the 3000 of these planes built (ok, not all are still in service, but even so) is a fairly non-trivial amount of work - and a lot of downtime for planes that would never otherwise sit idle for even 12 hours except during planned maintenance. The FAA normally gives 3-5 years for such directives as it fits in with the airlines existing maintenance schedules. I don't know if anyone has done the math, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that for a change like this where the gain was relatively minor, that doing it outside of a regular maintenance program actually had an increased risk to safety over not doing the change at all! > Yes, three years for two bulbs on each plane. Makes me want to setup a > donations web site for the poor Boeing and the USA airlines. > For the US airlines I'm sure that would be welcome, given that many of them either are in, or have recently been in, "Chapter 11" bankruptcy protection. Scott _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
