Imagine you were an auto mechanic telling your boss a customer’s car got banged up while you were working on it. Now imagine you’re an aircraft mechanic explaining how a multi-million dollar plane fell off a jack during maintenance and ended up with the jacks sticking through the fuselage and wings.
For you it’s an exercise in imagination, but for the maintenance crew at Lufthansa Technik in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico it’s an all-too-real nightmare. A Spirit A319 with almost 12 years service was flown in for maintenance two weeks ago. In pictures that found their way to the Sam Chui aviation blog, it appears to have slipped off its jacks, or that a jack shifted under it.
No official word on what happened, and whether or when the plane will be able to resume service. Similarly, no word on the fate of another recent ‘garage incident’ victim, an Emirates A380 hat was getting a routine checkup at Dubai International Airport when it suddenly collapsed onto its nose, damaging the fuselage.
