On Site Maintenance Log For Sidewalk Sheds: Fill & Download for Free

I see that the trend so far has been to say that the pilots will be out of a job.Not true.I’ve researched tail strikes and found that about three in four result in damage to the aircraft, while one in four are cleared after the required post-strike inspection.So, tail strikes are serious.Depending on the model, somewhere between 70% and 85% of strikes occur during landing.THE ACTION TAKENAlmost all landing strikes were due to poor pilot landing technique—just about every mistake you can think of.But some of the takeoff strikes were found to be due to incorrect loading that resulted in the C.G. being out of limits. Obviously, nothing happened to the pilots in those cases.I was not able to find a single instance of a pilot being fired for a tail strike, which really means nothing at all. Just because this report doesn’t mention it, doesn’t mean some are not fired. I flew for a major airline for ten years and I heard of some tail strikes, but my airline never fired anyone for it.However, the report extensively discusses the retraining that takes place after a tail strike, in simulators, of course.From the retraining discussion one can logically infer that all tail strike pilots are NOT fired. If they were, there would be no suggestions for retraining procedures.From what I read, tail strikes happen regularly, with one airline discussed in this report reporting an average of one per month.It seems unlikely to me that the airline reporting one per month is firing all of those tail strike pilots—especially since the article discusses retraining techniques.THE ANSWERSo, the answer to the question is that a tail strike must be written up in the maintenance log. First, a maintenance inspection will determine if the jet can remain in service or will need repairs.About one in four are cleared right there on the ramp to continue flying. The others receive the required maintenance.There will be some type of investigation by the airline including in many of the reports I read, pulling the flight data recorder to study the final approach. In the majority of those cases, the pilots flew a bad approach and retraining will be likely be required.If the loading was incorrect, some other airline employees will receive retraining.From my own airline experience, no one was fired. From my research I have not found that firing is the normal outcome.

I’ll be very specific and say the answer to your exact question is no.Your question specifically references making a hands on approach due to the possible need for a go-around. While we were, indeed, hands on that’s not why. We never needed a go-around during an auto land. There were two other reasons.EARLIEST AUTOLANDI was flying for Eastern Ait Lines when we became the first airline to put auto land on domestic B-727s.Auto land has come a very long way in the ensuing 33 years! It was frightening back then. The safest way to start an auto land approach back then was to assume the autopilot would kick off. It’s been a very long time, but my memory is that even those early systems made the landing all but once or twice. Not to say, however, that we ever got comfy at the practice of being pioneers. We were always ready.EVERY AUTOLANDForget the reliability. If you were guaranteed 100 percent success, you’d need to be ready to take over because from the time you first see the runway the jet will touchdown about two to three seconds later. Maybe today’s systems are better, but our practice was to let George put it on the concrete, then take over. We were required to let it autoland as a condition for authorization to land in certain low visibility conditions, but the regs didn’t say we had to let it finish.Today, pilots may routinely let George take it further, but in the pioneering days, we weren’t ready to go past touchdown, so we were hands on to take over quickly.AUTOLAND JOKEThere’s an old joke that has a long list of stupid pilot maintenance write ups and corresponding smartass repair notes by mechanics. One of my favorites is, “Left main tire almost needs replacing.” The mechanic wrote on his side of the log, “Almost changed left main tire.”The one that applies to this question is, “Autoland made very hard landing.” The record on the mechanic’s side in the maintenance log was, “Autoland not installed in this aircraft.”Oops!

I had a lucrative collection of jobs in college that I tried to continue during medical school. In the seventies, the FCC required a licensed Radio Engineer to actually take care of the equipment for radio and television broadcast stations. I went to college in Tulsa, Oklahoma and over time, had accumulated jobs with several radio stations, which I maintained. When everything went well and all the equipment worked as it should, all I had to do was check-in every few days and sign off on the maintenance logs (for which I charged a “two hour minimum” even though it only took a few minutes). When things broke, however, I might spend all night at a remote transmitter site on a hill top, while the station lost massive amounts of advertising revenue. I made more than enough money to pay for tuition and living expenses - I drove a new sports car - and rapidly got accustomed to this sort of life style.When I started medical school in Oklahoma City, I had lots of contacts through various broadcasting companies and started working for an FM broadcast station ten minutes away from my apartment. After all, I had graduated near the top of my class with an Engineering Physics degree - how hard could Medical School be?After failing my first Gross Anatomy exam, I became terrified that I might not actually be able to “cut-it” in Medical School. I quit my job and devoted all my time to studying. I rapidly discovered the difference between learning Physics and learning Medicine. While Math, Physics and the Engineering Sciences required problem solving ability, the main thing that the “Basic Science” years of Medical School required was rote memorization - of huge quantities of information - something my brain had not been accustomed to doing for years. Most of my classmates had traditional “pre-med” degrees like biology, biochemistry, genetics, etc. I had taken only the bare minimum of “pre-med” requirements, so most of the course work was brand new to me.Thankfully, by devoting all of my waking time to studying, I was able to successfully pass all of the subjects in my Basic Science years. When I got to the clinical years of Medical School, they actually expected me to use my problem solving abilities again, and I excelled from then on.Thanks to my parents, I didn’t accumulate large student loan debts, despite not being gainfully employed again until starting my internship.