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Found out our shop's wire marking rule came from a 1998 crash report and nobody knew
So I was cleaning out the back cabinet at the hangar in Wichita looking for a spare spool of 20 AWG and I found this old binder from the previous shop owner, all faded printouts from an NTSB report on a 1998 crash where a wire got crossed during a repair and the crew never caught it. Here is the part that got me. The report said there were 47 wires in that bundle with zero labels and the mechanic just went off memory because the manual drawings were wrong anyway. Our shop has this rule where every wire over 6 inches gets a stamped sleeve and I always figured it was just the old man being picky about neatness. Turns out it came straight out of that report and it has been in place longer than some of the guys on my crew have been alive. I asked my lead about it and he shrugged and said that is just how we do it here. Nine hours of my life I have spent cutting and stamping sleeves on harness repairs and I never once knew why. Did any of you ever dig up the actual reason behind a rule your shop follows, or is it all just tribal knowledge at this point?
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seanhunt29d ago
That line about your lead shrugging and saying "that's just how we do it" is the whole problem right there. Half the rules in this industry are written in blood and everybody just follows them like it's a dress code. Next time you find a binder like that, photocopy the key page and tape it up in the shop, because once the old guys retire nobody will remember and some rookie will decide stamping sleeves is a waste of time right before it matters.
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