Luftwaffe refuses acceptance of two A400M's

[Slater]

Loose bolts would appear to be a critical but easily corrected issue. Wonder if this aircraft is near the end of it's teething problems?

 

https://thedefensepost.com/2019/11/13/germany-luftwaffe-refuses-delivery-airbus-a400m/

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Very similar issues on this side of the pond. The USAF keeps rejecting the KC-46’s for shoddy workmanship or trash left in critical areas. They’ve found empty soda drinks cans in wings near control equipment, and parts like washers in fuel tanks. They've even stopped the production line once or twice to re-inspect everything and take apart built aircraft to find trash.  

Edited November 17, 2019 by Corsairfoxfouruncle

[fightersweep]

5 minutes ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

Very similar issues on this side of the pond. The USAF keeps rejecting the KC-46’s for shoddy workmanship or trash left in critical areas. They’ve found empty soda drinks cans in wings near control equipment, and parts like washers in fuel tanks. They've even stopped the production line once or twice to re-inspect everything and take apart built aircraft to find trash.  

Wow! That's really shocking. Makes you wonder if the civil stuff off the line is full of trash too?

[Plumbum]

My older brother was a maintenance officer for a flock of Herks at Forbes years ago.

One Herk kept losing fuel in some manner. They looked into the wing's fuel tanks and

found a cot or mattress of some sort. Someone napping on 3rd shift at the plant?---John

[spruecutter96]

Just incredible! How can this kind of lazy workmanship happen in the 21st Century? These aircraft cost 100's of millions of Dollars (Pounds, Euros, etc).

 

To me, this just defies belief.

 

Chris.  

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

On an oil & gas project I was on a few years back we required a screw-type gas compressor to collect CO2 rich gas at near-atmospheric pressure to let us spike it back into the fuel gas system to get rid of it via the gas turbine generators.

 

The new compressor was expensive and came from a reputable supplier  from within the EU. After passing the Factory Acceptance Test without any problems prior to delivery it utterly failed to perform once installed in the new module we had built in a reputable EU yard.

 

It was stripped down in situ and a Ford car seat foam moulding was found stuffed inside the machine. I'm not sure an adequate explanation was ever found for that...

 

Many people need a serious attitude adjustment when it comes to performing their work.

[Rickoshea52]

It is common within the rotary wing world that after a gearbox, transmission shaft, rotor head or blade change that a re-torque of any attaching fasteners are done within a given flight time. It’s surprising to see an acceptance being rejected for something like this...unless I am missing something. 

[Circloy]

21 hours ago, Slater said:

Loose bolts would appear to be a critical but easily corrected issue

If only!

 

 

The loose bolts are a symptom of failed practices either at Airbus or one of its suppliers and points to potentially more serious failures. The loose bolts have been found but what else has been missed? As pointed out above what's been left behind that shouldn't be there, is everything as it should be, have the correct & genuine components been used in it's construction. As Airbus's sytems have clearly failed It's all got to be in doubt.

 

Military or Civil lives are at risk.

 

I've just completed a three day course on pre-delivery inspection so am aware of the risks of not ensuring everything is done, done correctly and in the right order.

[junglierating]

Hmm lot of experts here ...not sure how many are in aviation maintenance however stuff does happen no matter how many checks you have built in .Its the number and type of checks carried out that minimises this risk.

I know I have had near misses but fortunately nothing happened.

I'm with Rick though something is missing in this story....I'm sure it will be sorted

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

11 hours ago, Rickoshea52 said:

It is common within the rotary wing world that after a gearbox, transmission shaft, rotor head or blade change that a re-torque of any attaching fasteners are done within a given flight time. It’s surprising to see an acceptance being rejected for something like this...unless I am missing something. 

 

There's a retorque and there's loose though no? On most rotating equipment one might expect new bolts to relax a little and vibration can encourage that hence retorquing will snug them back up at the stretched length of the thread. If things are actually loose then stuff is moving that shouldn't be.

 

The BV234 civvie Chinooks developed a habit of the bolts holding the rotor gearbox crowngears to the shaft flange loosening off. Boeing's "fix" was retorquing. What was actually happening is that the civilian machines were flying near max AUW most of the time whereas Army machines flew full one direction and empty the other - the crown gears were coning under the torque and stretching the bolts. Simply retorquing didn't solve the developing fatigue problem though and at least one US Army higher-time machine and a British Airways Helicopters machine suffered a fracture of the crown gear in flight; in both cases the forward gearbox immediately seized, the rotors desynchronised and aft rotorhead separated from the fuselage. Obviously both crashes resulted in multiple fatalities.

 

So in summary, loose bolts might be something to worry about or not, and it depends on exactly which ones and why they're loose. Without knowing the A400M in detail most of us here are probably unqualified to state which is the case - one hopes the engineers inspecting the aircraft know what they're doing or at least erred on the side of caution.

[Rickoshea52]

2 hours ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

There's a retorque and there's loose though

Quite. The article is vague in that it doesn’t make this distinction, are they  loose due to torque relaxing after a given flight time or are they loose due to some other issue that hasn’t been disclosed? 

[Rickoshea52]

15 hours ago, Circloy said:

The loose bolts are a symptom of failed practices

Not necessarily failed practices; other factors may include the incorrect torque being specified or applied,  material specification, incorrect or missing manufacturing processing or human factors.
The company I work for sometimes experiences disclosures from suppliers about parts that have escaped the quality system - not all (actually very few) pose a safety. 

[Circloy]

4 minutes ago, Rickoshea52 said:

incorrect torque being specified or applied

Failed practice either at design level or application.

 

5 minutes ago, Rickoshea52 said:

material specification

Failed Practice either at design, purchasing or manufacturing.

 

5 minutes ago, Rickoshea52 said:

missing manufacturing processing

Failed practice either at process design or during manufacture.

 

8 minutes ago, Rickoshea52 said:

human factors

That's why practices are in place to eliminate 'human factors' as much as possible.

11 minutes ago, Rickoshea52 said:

The company I work for sometimes experiences disclosures from suppliers about parts that have escaped the quality system - not all (actually very few) pose a safety

Good to see, hope they are relayed up to your customers.

 

All escapes pose an increased risk they just need to be understood and managed

 

We too experience escapes and due to the nature of our products report them direct to the Design Authorities (i.e. Engine Manufacturers) for a full and proper risk assessment.

[Slater]

Presumably all A400M operators were issued a safety directive to check for proper torque on these particular bolts. Just speculation, but it sounds like a mistake/oversight on the part of factory personnel that made it's way past QA.

[junglierating]

Mr Circloy you mention failed a lot in your last post sometimes stuff gets discovered....it happens constantly in aviation  not always due to negligence....the fault not the discovery 🤣

[Circloy]

A failure's a failure whenever it's discovered.

 

No one would claim the original windows on the Comet were a success would they?

[EwenS]

Then of course we had BAe Systems at Govan gluing back the heads of sheared bolts when they built the current HMS Forth.

 

https://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/costs-controversy-and-context-update-on-the-royal-navys-new-opvs/

[Rob G]

8 minutes ago, EwenS said:

 gluing back the heads of sheared bolts

 

And there was I thinking that coal industry maintenance dirty secrets were secret... (Although we do use lashings of high quality Sikaflex).

[KevinK]

30 minutes ago, EwenS said:

Then of course we had BAe Systems at Govan gluing back the heads of sheared bolts when they built the current HMS Forth.

 

https://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/costs-controversy-and-context-update-on-the-royal-navys-new-opvs/

It's amazing the touching faith some have in the powers of glue!

 

This reminds me of a similar issue I came across on a spacecraft build about 20 years ago. One Friday afternoon, I received a request for deviation/waiver from the spacecraft Prime Contractor: I was a technical advisor to the spacecraft customer, so I was the last formal engineering approval in the chain, the manufacturer having signed it off.

 

The request was to approve the gluing of 200 rivets in the spacecraft primary core structure: these rivets had been found to be loose on a vibration test of the spacecraft and the proposed solution was to glue them in place to prevent movement. I pointed out to the manufacturer's Chief Engineer that while this would certainly secure the rivets, it would do nothing to the security of the structure, since rivets work by clamping action, and I suggested remove and replace was the correct course of action. To his credit, he immediately agreed and fixed the problem.

 

I think that this sort of issue happens more than we like to admit, where a problem is caught far along the review process, and sometimes by less-than-formal review, such as 'watercooler conversations'. The advent of ISO 9000 inadvertently made things worse by implicitly - in some organizations' view - giving all the responsibility to the Quality element and lessening the informal paths.

 

In the end, as an industry, we try to apply multiple screens and levels of review to catch errors but some will get through: even six-sigma quality isn't 100%!

[Adam Poultney]

Not to open a can of worms here but some of this sounds like there is a bit of an issue in the aircraft industry with QC.... Imagine what would happen if that happened on something like a large airliner and caused a crash! Leaving stuff behind is just dangerous.... Should be checked for at every step of the way

[KevinK]

24 minutes ago, Adam Poultney said:

Should be checked for at every step of the way

It generally is, Adam, but there are always 'quality escapes'. Anecdotal events like the debris left in KC-46s may seem to be extreme, but did you know that there may be at least one 'remove before flight' banner fluttering in the breeze on the surface of Mars?....

Edited November 18, 2019 by KevinK

[Asmodai]

1 hour ago, Adam Poultney said:

Not to open a can of worms here but some of this sounds like there is a bit of an issue in the aircraft industry with QC.... Imagine what would happen if that happened on something like a large airliner and caused a crash! Leaving stuff behind is just dangerous.... Should be checked for at every step of the way

I'm not sure you want to hear then that shoddy maintenance practices are a significant cause of crashes... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261. 88 people died because of inadequate lubrication. 520 people died because of a poorly carried out repair of a bulkhead not done according procedures...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_123 . One could go on and on with these.

[Alan P]

On 11/17/2019 at 5:41 PM, fightersweep said:

Wow! That's really shocking. Makes you wonder if the civil stuff off the line is full of trash too?

When we lost one of our 777s in a crash at LHR in 2010, the investigation into why the fuel wasn't reaching the engines found various things inside the fuel tanks that could only have been there since manufacture. A glove, plastic ice scraper, a cloth and various bits of plastic tape and paper card.

 

I wonder what other pieces of detritus are hanging around the rest of the airframe 😂

[EwenS]

If you are worried about the plane you fly on crashing, just take a look at what can happen in hospital operating theatres despite all the precautions taken to count medical eqpt in and out of the patient. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retained_surgical_instruments

 

Not to mention the cases of removal of the wrong limb. Tip. If you ever need an amputation make sure you mark your own limb with indelible marker just in case!

 

I recently had a hospital visit to see an opthamoloigist about a vision problem. Most of the work was done by a nurse. I explained the sight impairment was in the bottom left hand corner of the right eye. By the time I reached the consultant it had been written down as the left eye. She was a bit miffed when I said that she was examining the wrong eye. "But it says here...."

[stever219]

12 hours ago, KevinK said:

It generally is, Adam, but there are always 'quality escapes'. Anecdotal events like the debris left in KC-46s may seem to be extreme, but did you know that there may be at least one 'remove before flight' banner fluttering in the breeze on the surface of Mars?....

I recall reading of a TriStar that spent several weeks flying around the Middle East in the ‘seventies with very stiff ailerons.  Eventually someone was persuaded to take a look at the problem and found a large plank wedges into the starboard wheel bay that was fouling the control runs.  Apparently it had been used as an impromptu support during some work in the bay and “forgotten” on completion.