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-Short Attention Span Theater-
$14M engine of US Air Force F-35 is destroyed after maintenance engineer left FLASHLIGHT inside it before test run
2024-01-20
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news]
  • The F-35 was undergoing maintenance at Luke Air Force base in Glendale, Arizona on March 15, 2023 when the incident occurred

  • An engineer left a flashlight inside the engine: the three-person team did not follow the standard procedure of ensuring all equipment was accounted for

  • When the jet's engines were turned on, they heard a clanging sound: on shutting them down they saw the blades were damaged

Bird strike here on the ramp? No, that story just ain't gonna fly Eugene.
Posted by:Skidmark

#10  An authorized tool should have been inventoried before the engine was started.

Seems like a no-brainer to RFID all the tools.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2024-01-20 11:49  

#9  ...but I hear there are job openings at Boeing.

When one door closes, another door opens.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2024-01-20 11:46  

#8  /\ Ref 'contractors.' Also see today's article on 6Jan pipe bombs.
Posted by: Besoeker   2024-01-20 10:29  

#7  ^5 - M.M, I had not even thought of the possibility of these guys being contractors. It's a lot more prevalent now than when I was in - at my last base we had a couple of tech reps each from LockMart, P&W/GE, and the like who were mainly there to assist when not even the TOs could figure something out. These days we don't have enough Airmen on the line to keep things going and the contractors are apparently helping to pick up the slack...at a tidy profit for their employers as well.

Mike
Posted by: MikeKozlowski   2024-01-20 10:26  

#6  P2K…you beat me too it…ha
Posted by: Warthog   2024-01-20 10:05  

#5  the idiot who failed to follow standard, simple, direct, written-in-stone procedure will now be exploring the exciting world of grounds maintenance for what's left of his career.

Not necessarily. If a diversity hire of P&W, will probably be bumped upstairs or golden parachuted with a NDA. If some poor enlisted airman but of the appropriate box-checking background, will probably be kicked upstairs.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2024-01-20 09:36  

#4  ...but I hear there are job openings at Boeing.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2024-01-20 08:56  

#3  ...This sort of thing shouldn't be happening, but it does whenever people are involved - doesn't make it better, but it does explain it. Foreign Object Damage - or FOD, to use the colloquial term - is a constant threat to the care and feeding of airplanes and their crews.

The RAF actually lost an F-35 about a year ago because some poor sod left an inlet cover in the inlet, and at least two preflight inspections didn't catch it. The good news here is that the Luke AFB bird will fly again after an unscheduled engine change. The bad news is that the idiot who failed to follow standard, simple, direct, written-in-stone procedure will now be exploring the exciting world of grounds maintenance for what's left of his career.

Mike
Posted by: MikeKozlowski   2024-01-20 07:57  

#2  Survived an F-35 engine ingestion and still working.

Posted by: Besoeker   2024-01-20 02:29  

#1  Looks like a personal light.

An authorized tool should have been inventoried before the engine was started.
Posted by: Skidmark   2024-01-20 00:59  

00:01