Originally Posted by
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I was on a UA A320 flight today. Doors closed and jetbridge pulled away. The pilot came on and said they had some minor maintenance before we boarded and "no matter how minor" they were waiting for the paperwork to print in their cockpit printer before we could depart.
Nothing happened for a while. Then he came on and said they found some issues with the repair. So, we had to open the door again for a maintenance guy to come onboard. It didn't take long after that for us to get going.
I have always wondered the reliabilty of these repairs when the maintenance people are under time pressure. I am guessing they are well trained and also these repairs are pretty fool proof for a trained personnel? So, things rarely go wrong.
I have never had a case where a "rework" occurred like this. How often does this happen? I am guessing this kind of thing would be tracked so they don't happen again?
Airline mechanics are under a lot of pressure to get the aircraft back in the air as quickly as possible. An airliner sitting on the ground is not making the company any money. As far as reliability, the repairs are good enough to keep them flying. Now as one mechanic as told me, they fly them until they break, and then keep flying them some more. The good thing for the passengers is that there is so much redundancy built into systems that a single failure is no big deal and the aircraft keeps on going.