maxmurphy•25d agoMost Upvoted

Spent four hours tracking down a vibration in a 737 only to find a loose penny in the tailcone bilge area.

The penny was just sitting there rattling around, and it took me, two leads, and a brand-new apprentice that whole afternoon before somebody finally thought to check the lowest point in the fuselage, has anyone else ever found something dumb like that hiding in an odd spot?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_riley24d ago

That "quick pickup" line is funny because it's exactly how life works sometimes. You spend forever chasing down some tiny, harmless thing and it eats up a whole afternoon, but a real disaster like a busted bracket would have been way more obvious because something would have actually broken or not worked right. Kind of like how my check engine light once turned out to just be a loose gas cap after I spent two days freaking out about it. The little stuff hides better because it doesn't cause enough trouble to scream at you.

gray_schmidt825d ago

Oh man, honestly I gotta push back on this one. A loose penny is a dream find compared to the real nightmare stuff. You could have had a forgotten tool, a busted fastener, or even a dead critter back there (way more common than anyone wants to admit). That penny just needed a quick pickup, but a real hidden hazard like a cracked bracket could ground the plane for days and cost way more than four hours of hunting.