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FAA data on tool loss incidents made me rethink our whole shadow board system
I was digging through the FAA service difficulty reports last night for a different reason and saw that over 2,400 tool loss events got reported in the last five years across US carriers. That number blew my mind since my hangar at Atlanta has only had two close calls, but I bet a lot of smaller shops never log anything. Do any of you actually report near misses to the FAA, or is that just for the big airlines?
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ray_burns6d ago
The part that gets me is what those 2,400 reports actually say about the system, not the shops. Every one of those events traces back to one guy in one hangar who either forgot a wrench or dropped something and didnt notice. But the reports pile up at the airline level so it looks like a fleet problem when its really a hundred separate human moments. Your two close calls in Atlanta probably only got caught because somebody happened to look in the right place at the right time, not because the shadow board did anything. I bet the real number across all US maintenance is way higher than 2,400 and the reporting gap isnt small shops hiding stuff, its that near misses have no clear home on the form so nobody bothers. The FAA only hears about the ones that turn into actual damage.
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