Is safety being systematically subcontracted to the lowest bidder?

This has nothing to do with subcontracting. The United incident was done in-house.

I was a United Airlines pilot for 30 years. We had the finest maintenance in the business. If we knew all the details of this incident, which we don’t, I think we’d find that it was little more than a minor infraction. Otherwise, the airplane wouldn’t have flown that many times without incident. I hope all the perfect people who have never made a mistake, will please explain how they do it to us that are only human.

Steve, I haven’t been around the industry nearly as long as you have, but my first response reading this was: “shrug” someone is blowing this way out of proportion.

I’m curious about something else, however… what would have happened if they were using the required protective caps instead of the shop towels? Would there have been the same inflight problem? If so, would the commenters here still be calling for the mech’s firing? For a one-time instance, I wouldn’t call for a guy’s head on a silver platter. Only if he has a reputation for being sloppy and lazy. (And truth be told, I bet two people screwed up — the guy who didn’t remove the caps/rags, and the guy who was supposed to sign off that the caps/rags were removed prior to flight.)

I don’t. There is an ‘open and honest’ reporting culture in the airlines as it is far more important to have a fault reported than an aircraft fly with a defect because someone feared they might lose their job. It is very rarely just one person that causes an incident/accident and only by having an open culture for reporting mistakes can a dangerous process or chain of events be stopped. In this case, it was the airline that reported the incident. Could they have hidden this? Probably. Did they know they would be fined for the breach? Almost certainly yes. But they did report it on the grounds that it may stop someone at another airline doing the same and prevent another engine failure – perhaps in a less benign situation such as at V1 with gusty winds, a high payload and wet runway.

You would think the ‘procedure’ to use a cap would have been enough. If that one simple procedure wasn’t followed what new procedure would be?

My sense is that this was referring more to having multiple sets of eyes looking at something – just duplicating internal oversight. She didn’t say that explicitly, but I think it was probably along those lines.

You would think the ‘procedure’ to use a cap would have been enough. If that one simple procedure wasn’t followed what new procedure would be? You know they aren’t going to hire more people so everyone is connected at the hip with another person to make sure everything is done right.

The pilot literally didn’t say anything. Just went around and took off again. When we got to Dulles, I tried in vain for about an hour to get somebody at United to pay attention and initiate an inquiry. I tried everyone I could find at Dulles and even called Chicago HQ to see if anyone there was interested. Eventually I gave up and reported the incident to the FAA.

What I learned from the FAA, which did investigate, made me feel a little better about the safety situation, but no better about United. Apparently, between gate and takeoff we were reassigned to a shorter runway that required more flaps than had been set, and the pilots failed to make the adjustment before starting the takeoff roll. The FAA inspector said that the pilot self-reported (apparently he cares what the FAA thinks but not what his passengers think), and that if he had continued with the takeoff we would have been OK, although we would have taken off after the runway’s designated abort point. The inspector also said that a 777 will not take off unless the flaps are extended at least partway.

That said, I was and remain appalled at the complete lack of interest shown by United. I also was and remain appalled by the pilot’s behavior in not making an announcement in order to reassure the passengers and cabin crew. This is not the kind of performance that makes one want to fly an airline, is it?