At least you are to a flying part of the syllabus! One CPT a week.... 6-7 weeks in ground school when you should be done in 2.5....
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Are primary students still going through A.F. primary?
- Thread starter helolumpy
- Start date
At least you are to a flying part of the syllabus! One CPT a week.... 6-7 weeks in ground school when you should be done in 2.5....
I've mentioned this before, but back in 2007 I flew w/ a Corpus det out in Las Cruces. At the time, they were 1000 X's behind and TW-5 guys (like myself) came out to help. A couple of weeks ago, I was coming through Las Cruces (in something gray) and talked w/ one of the Corpus IPs there. Apparently the problem that was there in 2007 is still there now and they're ~3000 X's (or some order of magnitude like that) behind. Sure, weather is part of it, but we were talking about Corpus Maintenance and it continues to be a huge deal. Meanwhile, TW-5 maintenance was in Las Cruces for that det and he was saying how much better they were. Same company (Sikorsky for now) at both places.
What I find amazing is how nothing has changed in the last 3 years. You'd think CNATRA (the entity, not the head guy himself) would be kicking asses to get it fixed, but I guess not.
After being around the Sikorsky guys at Whiting I am pretty impressed. They know their shit. And to be honest when a guy whose been working around and on the PT6A engine and the T-34c for 25 years tells me that it's going to fly and work as prescribed I really believe him.
I wonder why Corpus has such issues with their maintenance guys? You would think that the quality would be pretty even between Whiting and Corpus seeing as how it's the same company. Are they older airplanes and trying to polish turds?
We had a production brief here before Thanksgiving leave and we're pretty far back through the logjam that was here in July. I don't know if I can throw out specifics, but sounds like between the Det and better MX, we're doing better. From my level, sounds like everyone is working as hard as they can to get it done.
About the only big thing I can think of is Corpus Christi is a lot closer to the water (saltwater) than Whiting. All other things being equal, that ought to add up over the years into more materiel issues- not the same thing as being spotted on the flight deck of a ship, but still... (I should really phrase that in the form of a question, since I've never been to Corpus and I'm curious if being on the water makes much difference in the airplanes.)
In the meantime, big and little deviations in maintenance practices can happen anywhere.
My info is anecdotal (me sitting in Corpus airplanes as well as talking to Corpus IPs), but the unofficial consensus is that they're not in "bad" material condition which causes more work to fix them, but instead, they're not worked on at the level they should be and are therefore in "bad" material condition. The actual definition of "bad" is, no doubt, up for debate. But when I had a Corpus QAR tell me play in the fixed horizontal stab was okay for flight and then later I hear from a Whiting QAR (and numerous other people) "no way! That bird is down," it makes me wonder what's going on at Corpus. There are some other issues, as well, but they start getting into mishap stuff, which we don't need to get into here.
That answers my question and satisfies a lot of my curiosity.
Well qualified answer and well put too. Thanks.
Edit: A good lesson for the young'uns is "trust but verify." (Good reminder for the old'uns too.)