So, the story I'm told goes like this. United takes fleet 6452, a Boeing 767-300, and gives it the full customer-facing treatment. New seats, interior fittings, and best of all, Panasonic's all-singing, all-dancing in-flight entertainment. All done at its Chicago maintenance base.
Last week, job nearly done, the bird's due back on the line...and then the firefighting system goes off. Allegedly for the third time in three weeks. To cut a long story short, fleet 6452 has now been patched up ready to limp off to the heavy maintenance guys at
Timco to try to turn back into something rather more presentable.
Extraordinary pictures, and the worksheet for the job - which as you'll see became a little extended - below.
Here's the version of events passed to me:
Bay 9 and 12 ORD.
B767's.
1,000 psi water canons take out 11 windows of a 767 - 6452.
A foreman runs up
& pulls down the window shades as they shatter in his face.
Mechanics
stand around and smile.
A failing company pays the lowest bidder to
install a new deluge system that goes off
three times in three weeks
unnecessarily.
West bay. East bay. Now...the far east bay.
Even the fire
department quit stopping by as it goes off again.
They pay fire control
contractors more than they pay us, but at least we gave them a quality
product.
Now...they get what they pay for.
The 767's? Probably ferry them
back to TIMCO for rehab. Don't even want to know the total cost of
repairs, replacing all cockpit CRT's etc must be big $$. No doubt
this plane will be giving us trouble down the road.
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