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Airplane Oops

kroberts

kroberts

Active Member
First off, apologies for the photo quality. I didn't take them. They were sent to a buddy of mine. Email we got says it happened last week but we haven't been able to find out where. The plane is a FedEx A300. The foil wrap on the nacelle and vertical stab leading edge indicates the plane was in long-term storage somewhere. Another coworker who saw the pix said it looks like a place he used to work at in Victorville CA.

Our guess is they didn't have the plane jacked up high enough when they were doing "gear swings" (cycling the landing gear through up and down cycles) and the dragging tires pulled the plane off the jacks resulting in the ensuing carnage. What blew us away is all the collateral damage caused by the equipment in place under the plane when it fell.

http://s104.photobucket.com/user/kroberts_01/library/A300

I hope this works correctly. I dont really know how to use Photobucket.
 
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Definitely an "oh ****!" moment.

Were those jack stands being used properly? Just doesn't look like much support at the pressure point. Anything missing?
 
Ouch!!

Start her with a nail.

That made me laugh. Back on the farm if the starter solenoid was bad we would bend a big spike so that we could bridge the starter solenoid. We would carry it in the tool box of the tractor.
 
Holy crap.

Can you imagine the reports that gotta get filled out? Somebody's going to have writer's cramp from signing **** before this is all over.
 
Don't know if that's Victorville but there is a bunch of retired airplane storage in the desert between Victorville and Boron (north). World's largest borax mine is in Boron.

Murray
 
I agree with the OP, probably a Gear Swing miscalculation on Jack Height. Oddly, it also looks like a wing spar failure from those pics.

Whatever the case, trashing a multi-million dollar airplane is a very bad day for those mechanics.
 
The jacks appear to have been correctly used, just not extended high enough. Being a storage plane my guess is that it didn't have any fuel in it, making it very light (in airplane terms).

Putting a plane up on jacks is a common heavy maintenance task. You should see a 747 up on jacks with the gear retracted! That never fails to impress.
 
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