algy Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 Does anyone have a general interest in aviation websites if so I have found one (service and problematic information on individual aircraft) that would make you think twice about boarding US registered aircraft. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inky pete Posted February 2, 2012 Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 As a Maintenance Engineer working on large machinery I've come across this sort of thing before, American engineers and technicians have a tendency to ruthlessly document every little niggle and gripe with a machine as they work on it - not just on aircraft, on all types of machinery. They seem to think that the more they write, the more they are justifying their own jobs. Many of the US maintenance engineers I have worked with seem to spend longer filling in logs and reports than they do actually maintaining and fixing machines! The French, on the other hand, never fill in any kind of paperwork so you've absolutely no idea what tasks have been completed and what haven't(they don't actually spend all that much of their working day doing anything useful at all!) German and Swiss maintenance engineers are quite similar to us in the way they work. Lots of time and attention to detail spent on the machine itself, problems fixed as they are found, and paperwork completed after the event noting the major issues found and fixed. These differences in approach to maintenance work will always result in the kind of things you see on websites or documents that collate maintenance histories. The Yanks will always look like they have unreliable machines with hundreds of things wrong with them, the French will look like they have machines which never break down and never need to be maintained, we will look to be somewhere in between. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
algy Posted February 2, 2012 Author Report Share Posted February 2, 2012 Worked with both German (Demag & AEG) and Swiss (Sulzer) engineers and have only the utmost respect for them in their skill and knowledge as engineers, I found that the Germans especially were not 'desk' engineers but were very much hands on, must admit I am talking heavy chemical industry engineering involved with installation and maintenance of large centrifugal compressors where the top casing weighed 40ton the bottom casing 72ton with 11ton rotors plus epicyclic gearboxes, learned a great deal off those guys. Pity it all finished for me on retirement in 1993, I'm one of those people that lived for my job. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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