Passenger Avoids Delay By Fixing Plane Himself

[Matt Molnar]

BBC:

Passenger fixes faulty airliner (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8136193.stm)
Holidaymakers avoided a long delay to their flight home when a passenger fixed a mechanical problem with their plane.

Passengers on Thomas Cook flight TCX9641 from Menorca were told to expect an eight-hour wait while an engineer was flown out from the UK.

One passenger then identified himself as a qualified aircraft engineer and offered to try to remedy the fault. [Full Article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8136193.stm)]

[planelove]

Just curious if the airline would have a policy requiring one of their own mechanics to work on the plane.I t could be a big liability but I think its cool that he did it.

[moose135]

Just curious if the airline would have a policy requiring one of their own mechanics to work on the plane.I t could be a big liability but I think its cool that he did it.
From the article, the mechanic/passenger who did the work is employed by Thomsonfly, who have a reciprocal maintenance agreement with Thomas Cook, so he was permitted to do the work. I doesn't sound like they would have let someone from a random airline work on it, since he would probably not be familiar with Cook's approved procedures or even the configuration of that particular aircraft.

[nikon50bigma]

If you have to do something right you have to do it yourself....

[USAF Pilot 07]

Sounds like a guy I fly with who used to be a maintainer...