Man, they had no luck at all. If it had fallen out differently, the first they would have known of it was the next inspection where the stop was missing. Or if it had been a different station and not dripping onto the engine and brake...

It looked kinda sad when the tail gave way and sagged to the ground, didn't it.:(
 
flion said:
It looked kinda sad when the tail gave way and sagged to the ground, didn't it.:(
Click to expand...

Yeah, after the fire spread under the plane, I was thinking "Hey wait a minute, is that starting to sag in the back? Or is it just the gear squatting on blown tires?" And then about 10 seconds after that, there she goes...
 
Larger Nut?

Interesting that the designing engineer did not provide for a larger nut that would have captured the bolt as a back up for a maintenance oversight as in this case.
 
oh, to be a fly on the wall at Boeing....

....something tells me there's been a meeting, or 16, about that exact issue, and there are drawings for the new bolt assembly in the works already!
 
For me, there is an RV related take-away from this:

"Approximately a month prior to the accident, the No. 5 slat-can had been inspected and reworked in accordance with a fleet-wide Boeing service letter."

So it was all good for however long until additional maintenance was done. As happenes all too often, maintenance broke the airplane. I try to keep this in mind whenever I have tools in my hands.

As a maintenance test pilot, it was usually the post significant maintenance test flights that provided "teaching moments"...
 
This post stuck home yesterday. I was doing an annual and found a jamnut loose on the elevator control rod. On the 4 a special washer is called out for one of the 3 control tubes (very small) 1/8 dia and .060 thick -both sides- to permit the tube to turn about 30deg left and right in the bell crank when full left and right aileron is used. I had installed the .030 x 3/8 dia (large dia) used on all other rod ends. It was not letting full aileron travel due to the bearing hitting the washers and with the stick force had not noticed the rub. As I moved the stick for ailerons it had enough force to cause the jam nut to back off.
Called vans and posted and found and corrected the issue. Full travel now and no issue.
I have 100 hrs on the plane no telling how low it was that way. I did not check ALL jam nuts before on annuals but after reading the posts here on the tail jamnuts I checked them all.

Wonderful information on the list. I am back to the plans and book again checking everything looking for other mistakes.
Thanks to those of you who replied.
 
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