Engineering Change

Training more than the nuts and bolts

A few years ago, a Qantas engineer was called to one of the airline’s Airbus A380s in Sydney. A defect had been discovered in an emergency slide that needed to be addressed before the aircraft could be cleared for departure.

The task required the engineer to climb up a wheel well to disconnect a “cannon plug” to deactivate the slide. The instructions, according to the A380 aircraft maintenance manual, called for the engineer to “carefully go up through the opened body landing gear door bay to get access to the slide electrical connector”.