F-22 takes 6.7 Million in damage, from a pin.

ACC Article

03/22/2006 -- LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. (ACCNS) – A maintainer’s failure to control the nose landing gear pin streamer during removal from an F-22A allowed the pin to be ingested into the right engine Oct. 20, 2005 prior to a mission at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, according to an aircraft accident investigation report released today.

I get the fealing that this guy will spend a good amount of time cleaning the head for the rest of his stay in the military

I've heard of worse. We had to have a DC-8 fly to the mainland from here on three engines because the ground guy went to plug into the intercom and 10 feet of intercom cable, including the big metal plug, went through the engine. This is actually a more common occurance than you realize. Those engines are horrible when it comes to pulling things into them. They call the F-16 the vacuum cleaner because if your ramp isn't clean before they go through, it will be after they do.

The ground lock pin is also pretty substantial. It's a fairly large steel pin that goes through the nose gear to keep it from folding. It's probably about 1/4th inch diameter.

[edit on 3/23/2006 by Zaphod58]

FOD is a killer. Before we lift from the roof pad we do a FOD check to make sure nothing is on the ground near the ship. It happens. I don't think this guy will end up on KP. Aircraft maint. staff are few and far between and alot of money has been invested in thier training. Too much to just throw the guy into the head.

FOD on a stealth? This guy is Toast! When his CO gets done with his ass, the only stripes on his uniform will be the ones on the American Flag he wears on his shoulder.

Fred, you are right that they probably won't put him on permenet KP, but he still in deep #. I have a brother who was a crew chief. One time he got busted (don't know why), they didn't throw him in the head, but his CO tore him a new one. He wound up scubbing the bathroom with a tooth brush AFTER his shift on the flight line.

If you think this guy isn't getting extra duty, you've never been in the military! The Air Force has ways of teaching people to pay attention to their job. He be TRIPLE checking his pins and streamers when they are done with him.

Tim

OMG... I was shocked when I read that it would cost 200 000 to repair the tires in one of our F/A-18...

Yep and the brainiacs in FAF managed to park one to a lightpost, can't imagine how much that costed

It's not the damage that's going to get him busted, it's the fact they didn't follow the correct proceedures.

Step 1) remove all pins and "remove before flight" tags
Step 2) inspect aircraft
Step 3) start engines

From what the article says, somewhere after step three, they realised they'd failed step one, and thus step two. Then instead of doing the right thing and shutting down so they could safely start over, the crew chief tried to take a shortcut and only shut down the one engine. He's lucky HE didn't become the fod.

Mistakes happen. This one just cost a whole bunch.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
I've heard of worse. We had to have a DC-8 fly to the mainland from here on three engines because the ground guy went to plug into the intercom and 10 feet of intercom cable, including the big metal plug, went through the engine. This is actually a more common occurance than you realize. Those engines are horrible when it comes to pulling things into them. They call the F-16 the vacuum cleaner because if your ramp isn't clean before they go through, it will be after they do.

The ground lock pin is also pretty substantial. It's a fairly large steel pin that goes through the nose gear to keep it from folding. It's probably about 1/4th inch diameter.

[edit on 3/23/2006 by Zaphod58]

Yes an F-16 is bad for picking FOD because of the location of the intake being under the plane and near the ground. But you have not been near some intakes with power untill you are near a set of F-4 intakes, they are some big powerful intakes,, i was a Crew Chief on RF-4C and those things would generate a powerful suction around them for several feet, you could just feel the things trying to suck you in. Now take the pic bellow, if you draw a line with a compass from the nose to the inboard pylon was like no mans land.





[edit on 26-3-2006 by ULTIMA1]

Unfortunately, it would seem a commen design comprimise on modern fighter aircraft to need to put the engines in a FOD prone area. About the only way to reduce the risk from an aircraft design standpoint (other than FOD screens) is to place the engines higher off the ground, such as in the A-10. However, high mounted engines like that are not great for aerodynamics.

When I was in the Marine Corps I was on the flight line as a jet mech. My first duty station was MCAS Beaufort SC and I worked on the VAL (Visiting Aircraft Line) so I had to deal with all types of military aircraft. There were two that I hated to hotpit (fuel from the fuel pits while AC was running) and that was the F-14 and F-15. On the Tomcat the pilot had to shut down the starbord (right) engine otherwise it could pull you down the intake from the nose of the AC where the refuling point was. On the Eagle the fuelilng point is underneath between the intakes, but a bit behind the edges, you could still feel the suction from where you were. Jet aircraft create ENORMOUS amounts of suction and it doesnt take much to FOD out a engine.