Maintenance matters

Flying Safety, July, 2002

Editor's Note: The following accounts are from actual mishaps. They have been screened to prevent the release of privileged information.

Safety Sense Says...

Support equipment is there to help us perform our duties, and unfortunately many times it bites back when not handled properly. We need to ensure we use the equipment and safety gear provided to ensure we don't become another statistic on the injury charts.

AGE 1 -- Finger 0

Two workers were loading AGE onto a flatbed trailer in support of a deployment. Worker one was driving a forklift with a pintle hook attachment on the tines, and worker two was hooking things up. They were using the forklift as the prime mover, due to the tongue of the rolling stock being too high for the normal transporter. After they had the equipment on the flatbed and were unhooking it, worker two was having a hard time with the cotter pin for the pintle hook. He asked worker one to lower the forklift tines and the trailer's tongue, but unfortunately he forgot where he had placed his fingers. Worker two's left middle finger was between the pintle hook attachment and the trailer tongue, and as things moved, it pinched his finger in between the pintle hook and the trailer tongue, causing a fracture. Safety Sense says: "Know where your fingers are at all times or walk around with funny-looking fingers!"

Generator Set Wins The Bout

This worker must have thought he had spent enough time at the gym when he took on this MEP Generator. He was working as a corrosion shop augmentee where he had received a safety briefing when he started work. During the brief he was informed of the two-man policy for moving large pieces of support equipment. The worker was then directed to move the heavy generator from the painting shop to the AGE shop to ready it for return to the flightline. Now, the generator is a four-wheeled, towable power unit weighing in at a measly 4300 pounds, and is equipped with a manual rear braking system. To add to the worker's problems, the painting facility was built above the normal level of the adjacent buildings. Therefore, a six foot ramp with an approximately 30-degree angle was built to facilitate equipment installation and removal. Do you see why there is a two-man policy for moving heavy AGE at this facility?

Now, this enterprising individual proceeded to push the unit out of the building by himself. The unit had the towbar facing into the building, putting the brake lever on his left. As he pushed the unit out, the unit took on a mind of its own and made a right turn toward the building. He attempted to stop the unit by running alongside and setting the manual parking brake, which he did successfully. However, due to the weight of the unit and its momentum, the unit traveled an additional three feet before it stopped. Unfortunately for the worker, it rolled over his left ankle before it stopped. Cost to the enterprising individual and the Air Force for not asking for help? 14 days of convalescent leave to recover from surgery to repair the multiple fractures to his ankle. Hindsight is 20/20, but when the support equipment weighs approximately 21 times your weight, it is best to seek help before you get into the ring.

Dash-60 Provides Facelift

Most of us know the old reliable Dash-60 power units have a spring-loaded tongue to move it around with. As such, we know that if you let it, it will rearrange your face or other body parts for you. Unfortunately, this worker forgot that lesson from his AGE training. As he was pushing the tongue down to attach it to the tow vehicle, he lost his grip. The tongue, doing what it was intended to do, sprung back. Since the worker had his face over the tongue, he received a face-full of metal under pressure. Fortunately for the worker, all he received was a bunch of cuts and a sore mouth. Remember, Safety Sense says: "Do not place any part of your body in a situation that could cause you injury and ruin your God-given good looks!"

Watch That First Step

A C-5B was placed in a hangar to facilitate troubleshooting and repairing a right wing overheat detection discrepancy. The hangar was selected because there were stationary wing stands available that would ease the maintenance. Three days later, the aircraft was fixed and the O-Dark-Thirty shift was tasked to remove the aircraft from the hangar. During the tow preparations it was discovered that one of the fuselage panels still required installation. Four workers were dispatched to install the panel and the stands that had been previously stowed were unstowed.

Now, in this case there are 38 slides per side for the fixed-wing maintenance stands. The local LG policy letter states that all stand slides will be deployed and pinned prior to any maintenance. How many slides did they use this early morning? How about only the eight that were in the direct area of the one panel they needed to install? How many of us can say we haven't done that? Without all the slides properly installed, a four-foot by 30-foot hole existed between the aircraft and the stands, creating a large fall hazard. Was the supervisor using good operational risk management in this situation?