KC-135, E-3 and other’s of the 707 fleet 4 pins hold the tail on and if one fails “the vertical stabilizer would depart the aircraft”. I wonder if the pins were sourced from a certain Far East country?
Another Air Force fleet grounded over fears plane tails may fall off
Metallurgical analysis conducted on two nonconforming pins in January found several discrepancies. They were too small, made of the wrong material, and had insufficient plating, the memo said.
If even one were to fail in flight, the results would be catastrophic, the Air Force said.
“Should one pin fail, the other would not be able to carry the remaining load and the vertical stabilizer would depart the aircraft,” the memo said.
I was told that the Chinese were grading bolts incorrectly in order to overcharge folks in the States.
Honestly we finally broke a six man crew out of our Mod’s guys and they spent a month changing like 1600 bolts.
This is exactly why we have to produce stuff here.
The biggest thing I see is the buyer certainly should have tested before paying for that crap and then turn around and sue if they don’t keep the quality up.
"Metallurgical analysis conducted on two nonconforming pins in January found several discrepancies. They were too small, made of the wrong material, and had insufficient plating, the memo said.
If even one were to fail in flight, the results would be catastrophic, the Air Force said.
“Should one pin fail, the other would not be able to carry the remaining load and the vertical stabilizer would depart the aircraft,” the memo said."
This is nearly the exact problem we had with the out of spec bolts we got from China (of all places) they were out of spec and stretching and it wasn’t caught until some had broken during an accident. I’m not sure why, (other than backlog) we aren’t QC’ing these things randomly surely we have a Federal Agency tasked with this.
This is another example of how dealing with China is never good for us, they F’ us every time. I’m pretty sure had this stuff happened to the Chinese Military someone would immeadiatly become an organ donor.
I hate China, love Chinese People, just hate their Government.
Of course the AF does it’s own thing but good news on the civilian side is the administration is putting forward their top man to head the FAA. He has many years experience running bus lines and we all know the Transportation Sec is doing a bang up job.