12oclockHi

I get that the OP did the right thing and moved on. Good for him. As far as everyone knows about uncrupulous operators, I disagree. These boards are educational, read by many, not all of which know what lurks in the darker corners of this industry. I think it pays to share the stories; good, bad and the ulgy regarding some operators. Its all about being forwarned and forearmed.

TheRaven

The guy would be nuts to try anything against you, as it would draw attention to him and his practices....you dodged a bullet, and I can only hope he doesn't lure someone else in, potentially to their own doom.

JohnBurke

These practices are not uncommon, nor rare in the 135 world, and most won't hesitate to "try something." That something ranges from lawsuits to bad reports to future employers to retaliation into the PRD file (or PRIA records in recent times)

The operator wasn't shy about openly demanding his employee violate regulations and commit crimes. Those practices are the way that operator, and many others, do business. I've seen it in 135, corporate operations, fractional operations, and also in 121 operations and it's far from a recent thing. It's been going on a long time. Most 121 pilots will express doubt that it happens at their operation, but it does, though the pilot may not see it. Wheels falling off airplanes and door plugs blowing out are just public events that garnered visibility. Many don't. It's still there, though, and it's not going away.

NatGeo

One of the guys I worked with had an interesting story about one of his first freight jobs.

He was flying his first run with the owner and the weather was fogged in at the destination which was a VFR airport. The owner handed him a hand writted approach plate which said to follow the railroad tracks and than take a left at the road and follow the road. He realized it was a boxed canyon. Long story short, he didn't continue on with the job.

Cleared4appch

I’d like to know what kind of drugs that owner was on.

The stuff I hear that goes on in the 135/91 world never ceases to amaze me.

rickair7777

I have friends who are wealthy. When the subject comes up I tell them you cannot afford (safe) private aviation unless you're a billionaire.

Fractionals seem OK though, we don't seem to hear about stupid pilot tricks in 91k very much?

JohnBurke

Oh, good lord. How many volumes would you like to hear about fractional operations? And every other? I'll start with a one hour flight, picked up from maintenance. The airplane was in pieces on the hangar floor when I arrived, took a delay until maintenance finished. I filled several pages with writeups by the time I got to the first stop, where I took the airplane out of service for numerous items such as failed brakes, generator out, and on and on. Two aircraft with electrical discharges, reported lightning strikes, bad enough to require removal of engines for airframe and engine degaussing. Smoking rivets, burned holes all over the airframe, all from the electrical, and the operator threatened crews with their jobs if they didn't fly it. Picked up another airplane that had a MEL item grounding it in weather; operator demanded I fly it. I refused. I found an annunciator taped over with electrical tape; turned out that the MEL's idem wasn't deactivated and the MEL wasn't valid, and it had flown a number of live legs. DO had a nervous breakdown in the FAA fall-out, the FAA threatened to yank the operating certificate. The company fired all the maintenance personnel at the base where the work was done, and shut the base down, and the director of maintenance quit. Volumes of that ****.

Most 121 pilos don't believe it happens at their operation. It does.

Corporate? I found extensive corrosion in a corporate airplane; I was told to button it up and pretend it didn't exist.

Military? Oh so very much yes. Utility operations? You betcha. Goverment contracors? You probably wouldn't believe it if it was in a fiction novel, but unfortunately true.

135? I was handed a 135 operation on short notice and baptized as DoM. I quickly found numerous maintenance issues; some glaring. Gear actuators 25 years out of date, two phase inspections missing, and so on. The operator took the airplane briefly, the owner insisted his own mechanic would do the work. I ordered new gear actuators. The operator pulled the airplane into a hangar, shut the door, then produced the airplane later with the used actuators in a box. I checked; he took the 8130's, put the old actuators back on, and then told me to ship the new ones back for a refund. Paperwork falsified. I refused, told him to put the correct parts on before I called the FAA. Then spent 900,000 on one shop visit for a King Air of his. He wanted a twin cessna flown with the flaps fully extended, takeoff to landing, because of an electrical short, rather than repair them. Another operator flew an early morning night trip in a Turbo Commander. When he got back, he said I'd need fuel to do a mx runup. Sure enough, the tanks were dry.Literally dry. Mountains, night, weather.

Landing gear held together with hose clamps. APU line repaired with a beer can and safety wire (on a 747). Hard points instaleld under wings, bolted directly into the wing sructure, non-jettisonable, untested stores that orbited and caused control problems. H5606 leaks under 3000 psi so badly that the aircraft filled with red mist and the crew got limpoid pneumonia. I saw a wheel come off an airplane on landing. Found a propeller governor safety wired such that it wouldn't move; numerous flights flown that way. Wouldn't feather. Or cycle. Horizontal stab on an airplane moved an inch and a half back and forth; I was told "it's supposed to be that way." I kid not. In the middle of an inspection, with the interior removed and disconnected, an operator elected to take the airplane on a revenue flight. He laughed on return, said "you'll laugh when you see what I did." I didn't laugh. He set everything in it's relative positon, nothing bolteld or attached, and flew. Check airman in a 747, my leg, and I briefed that surrounded by 15,000' mountains, I wouldn't be leveling for a pink-page engine out procedure, but would carry the airplane to 18,000 and clean up there. Check airman knew the pink page procedure wouldn't work; we all did, and he said, "good call." Then thought about it, and said. "no, follow procedure." I pointed out that procedure wasn't survivable, another aircraft had crashed doing the same thing. He agreed, and then said, "follow proceedure." ****ing idiot. Explosion on takeoff, burned off the last 25' or so of the underside of the airplane. Operator attempted to cover it with aluminum from a boat supply at night, and paint it to hide the damage. I've seen five wings crack on everything from light piston twins to four-engine turbojets, with the operators demanding they fly. Two broke up in flight, killed everyone. Demands to fly overweight, tens of thousands of pounds overweight. A demand to fly a large wide body airplane into thunderstorms at night, with a known loss of radios. An operator demand to fly a large, widebody airplane following two-engines rolling back, and one failed, with a full fly-down indication off runway 33 at night, Anchorage. Go figure.

Just scratching the surface. It's not limited to one operator, or kind of operation; it's found throughout the industry. 91, 91K, 121, 125, 135, 137, etc.

Some pilots don't know about it. Some know and do it. Many of us refuse to tolerate it, but it's there and operators frequently don't inform pilots about it. I've always said one should be constantly on the look-out for reasons the flight shouldn't go. We are, after all, the first one to the scene of the wreck. Not legal or safe...it's gotta be legal AND safe. Everything in degrees, and I've spent my fair share of time in winds in formation beneath powerlines and all that jazz, but whether it's taking the time to make sure the cowls are latched on a 737, or someone taking an RII inspection seriously on a Boeing airplane, or refusing to accept massive hydraulic leaks on a DoD aircraft, yada, yada, yada, it's us who are left to put our feet down and say 'no' to unsafe or illegal operations. Who else will?

rickair7777

I've seen very little of that in 121, closest was a fuel leak in a turboprop engine nacelle. Techs tightened something up and ran it to check. A tiny bit of fuel still drippd out which they assured me was residual. I told them it had better be gone at the destination, also told them my house was 1/2 mile from the destination airport.

FO reported that fuel was still dripping at the DEST, even more so than before. I took the crew home and fired up the grill, and the techs departed on a three-hour road trip.

JohnBurke

Most 121 pilots think it's nearly non-existant at their airline.

100% of them are wrong.

12oclockHi

Some people have really, really bad luck with maintenance, others are either oblivious, ignorant, overly trusting or just willing to put their head in the sand to avoid a confrontation or the pain of dealing with a maintenance delay or cancellation. There is always some repercussions, and some employers are not shy about who and how those repercussions fall. I like to think that the top of the food chain, the bigger operators who care about their reliability and care about avoiding the negative repercussions of cancellations or worse, do the right thing, spend the money and don’t cut corners. The other side of the ramp (if you will) operates with a different mentality. They are often obvious, by sight or reputation, but not always. And things change over time.

We as aviators aren’t required to understand all that much about the behind the scenes part of maintenance. Many mechanic’s like and want it that way. Unscrupulous operators basically demand we just remain mushrooms as it pertains to aircraft repair. It’s up to the front end crew, the people ultimately responsible for the airworthiness, to be the last call on what’s flyable and what isn’t. Part of your further education, from student to professional, is to evaluate and make the hard decisions regarding go, no-go, and sometimes it will involve a judgement call about airworthiness of an aircraft you might be pressured to fly. Minimum equipment lists on large airplanes and all 121 operators, help but sometimes maintenance, the mechanic, his supervisor or even higher up, doesn’t see or agree with your assessment on a problem or the repair. Just pray you are not as unlucky as JohnBurke.