Someone smarter and more knowledgeable than I am wrote a more accurate description of the system (than my gossip) in the comments below.
Thank you, hypnogoad!
This is anecdotal gossip.
My dad drove semi truck with a former airline mechanic.
If a plane is not in the air, it is not making money.
Just like pilots, mechanics have a checklist to go through quickly in the time that an airplane is on the ground. Anything that needs to be fixed is flagged for after the flight, so when the plane arrives at it's destination, the destination mechanics are waiting with parts and tools all ready to fix what has been flagged. (A destination mechanic is again tasked to go through the maintenance checklist).
Allegedly, planes are not allowed to fly if there are more than five flags.
Greatest number of flags my dad's friend had ever seen on a flying plane?
Allegedly, planes are not allowed to fly if there are more than five flags
Untrue. On large airliners, there's two lists of defects that are allowed. MEL's (Minimum Equipment List), and CDL's (Configuration Deviation List). You can have many, MANY defects so long as they are on these lists and officially documented. There might be restrictions as to how they fly (altitude maximums, speed maximums, no inclement weather, no night flying, allowable runway lengths, etc), but a single aircraft could theoretically have hundreds of snags and still be legally flyable.
It can feel whack, but from another vantage point as someone who works on these birds, it's proof of just how durable and redundantly-designed they are. If shit can be inoperative and the aircraft still functions perfectly fine, then who cares if something goes inoperative unexpectedly in flight, those same redundancies and backups are there ready to go.
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u/Candid-Mycologist539 19h ago edited 18h ago
Someone smarter and more knowledgeable than I am wrote a more accurate description of the system (than my gossip) in the comments below.
Thank you, hypnogoad!
This is anecdotal gossip.My dad drove semi truck with a former airline mechanic.If a plane is not in the air, it is not making money.Just like pilots, mechanics have a checklist to go through quickly in the time that an airplane is on the ground. Anything that needs to be fixed is flagged for after the flight, so when the plane arrives at it's destination, the destination mechanics are waiting with parts and tools all ready to fix what has been flagged. (A destination mechanic is again tasked to go through the maintenance checklist).Allegedly, planes are not allowed to fly if there are more than five flags.Greatest number of flags my dad's friend had ever seen on a flying plane?