Author Topic: Expensive day at work.....  (Read 3083 times)

Offline BrianGMFS

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Expensive day at work.....
« on: December 17, 2006, 04:26:33 PM »
Not for me personally, but one of the other line service techs I work with had a bit of an "incident" yesterday. He was towing one of our King Air C-90's across the airport to our other hangar and due to a mechanical problem with the tug (transmission jerks hard when it shifts) the towbar disconnected from the plane and it rolled downhill into our old hangar. It narrowly missed hitting the airports fuel farm as well. The plane hit the right wingtip first then swung almost 90 degrees into the building. The damage isn't too bad considering what happened. The right wing will probably have to be pulled to replace the spar, a couple of ribs and outer wing skins. The right engine (P&W PT-6) will need an inspection and the right prop is toast. also the radome is crushed in and it will probably need to have the nosegear overhauled as well.

On a better note, my Boss wasn't really all that upset with my co-worker since he was following all existing company policies for aircraft towing. However I see some new policy's coming out soon. Accidents while infrequent... do happen. At Least it won't be as expensive as a certain engine shop's oops on the airport last year.... they left a rug on the wing of a beechjet during a full power engine test run... Talk about FOD. When the engine disintergrated after ingesting the rug, parts of the engine went through the fuselage :o

Anyway... good thing we just got the other new king air on the line this week.

Brian

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Offline chuckar101

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Re: Expensive day at work.....
« Reply #1 on: December 17, 2006, 04:29:22 PM »
Sounds like you guys need a new towbar.  Either that sucks for the coworker, but at least the aircraft can be repaired. 
WOW I did that!

Offline tundra_flier

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Re: Expensive day at work.....
« Reply #2 on: December 17, 2006, 09:29:44 PM »
Quote
and due to a mechanical problem with the tug (transmission jerks hard when it shifts) the towbar disconnected from the plane and it rolled downhill into our old hangar.

Sounds like you need a new tug more than a new policy.

Phil