How could VTNZ miss this?

[Paul in NZ]

Its all well and good to blame the owner and, being an, erm, older, person I understand where its coming from. Basically while we had WoF back then (written in parchment with a quill) you didn’t really expect your 1946 Austin 8 to go a whole 6 months without needing a tweak – or two. Indeed, our old Morris 8 with cable brakes was driven to a wof very gently; preferably without using the foot brakes otherwise it wouldn’t pass. You got used to being ‘aware’ of what was going on and looked for problems before they happened.

This was also the era of the modifier and you really didn’t need much in the way of certification to alter a vehicle.
In recent years we have seen it amazingly difficult (in comparison) to alter anything on a vehicle except perhaps the colour. We are increasingly MADE to trust the expert because we now don’t have the power to decide if somethings safe or not.

Modern vehicles are also lightyears more advanced. If you take my 1970 Triumph – kick only and good luck getting it to idle unless its had a decent run to warm up. You have to interact with it mechanically at all times whereas you don’t with a new vehicle, not even a choke knob to fiddle with.

We get used to that way of thinking. Eventually your head just refuses to accept that something like this ‘could’ happen to a newer bike. You could look right at it and not really see it.

[Fast Eddie]

Actually either captain or first officer will do "walk-around" before EVERY flight and visually check the critial parts of the aircraft (brakes, engines, control surfaces etc) Ground engineers will complete periodic checks and maintenance. Each aircraft will also be required to be almost completely stripped down, checked for critical structural damage and reassembled every couple thousand of flight hours.

The only reason there is no engineer on board is because of the glass cockpit era where the computers basically made the engineer obsolite.

hehe.. well thanks to google you can find operating manuals and pre flights checklists for the 747 range of planes..

pre flight/pre engine start.. right thru to taxi and take off.. apparently captain and first officer stays in plane they can check everything via the instruments can't trust everything you read online tho.. but also just being around planes so much I'm yet to see a commercial/passenger 747 pilot out on the tarmac himself circling around prior to take off.. they usually rock up with their bags, head straight to the cockpit..

engineers will check engines and aircraft between flights.. I really don't think the pilot does it. The engineer does all the work to the plane, who better to check between flights. Pilot has enough to do eh.
And of course they get stripped down and checked/serviced at certain intervals.. bit of a given.

for smaller/other planes for sure I've seen pilot themselves pre flight check water in fuel and structure etc.

churr!

and I'm pretty sure about the no engineer on board.. I asked O'hare at Otago, head of all the aviation and the flight simulator stuff they do. He did think the major motivator to remove engineer was cost cutting. sure the computers got better. but the workload is still there, u still have to monitor everything.. it is much harder on the 2 pilots not having the engineer helping out, and pilots are complaining and there have been accidents were pilots have missed faulty readings or errors or just been too busy and missed cues or distracted etc etc..



im just a uni student tho so I don't know much.. but I'm studying psyc specifically pilot training/aviation disasters and otago are now looking at (have been for a few years now before my time) cockpit layouts and issues with cockpits/pilot distractions that contribute to accidents. So I am getting quite interested in flying.. spending a lot of hours in the simulator Otago has.. flying is sweet!

[5150]

hehe.. well thanks to google you can find operating manuals and pre flights checklists for the 747 range of planes..

pre flight/pre engine start.. right thru to taxi and take off.. apparently captain and first officer stays in plane they can check everything via the instruments can't trust everything you read online tho.. but also just being around planes so much I'm yet to see a commercial/passenger 747 pilot out on the tarmac himself circling around prior to take off.. they usually rock up with their bags, head straight to the cockpit..

I only fly the damn things, so what would I know. Aye?

[baffa]

I only fly the damn things, so what would I know. Aye?

I know how to take off, but I'm not so good at landing. Allah Akbah!

[Fast Eddie]

I only fly the damn things, so what would I know. Aye?

haha I stand corrected then

[Fast Eddie]

I know how to take off, but I'm not so good at landing. Allah Akbah!

haha, they have a flight training thing down here, UFLY and the intro flight is only like 75 bucks.. was thinking of rocking up in sand rags and singing some a-rab type song.. see if they let me fly the plane still

[bsasuper]

The simple answer to the question is that so called "professional" wof inspectors are far from it.Welcome to to real world where people are "trained" and then "qualified" to perform a task, even If they are not up to it, the "trainer" just wants his money so will push as many people through and "pass" them as he can.The quality of apprentices I see at work is very questionable, they arnt there to do a professional job, they just wanted a job for the cash, they arnt even interested in the work.