FedEx plane falls off the jacks

Yikes! Bet that made one hell of a racket.
 
Yeah, boss, aah, yeah, not sure how to say this but .....
 
I know it was supposed to hit a jack point, but the photos make it look like the jack stand was designed to do exactly, precisely what the photos show it did.

Airplane caltrop.
 
OK, somebody has to say it, "It'll buff right out" :D
I believe that one is toast!:eek:
 
N747JB said:
OK, somebody has to say it, "It'll buff right out" :D
I believe that one is toast!:eek:
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I'd guess that would depend where it is in the hour/cycles phase. It's hard to say whether it's toast. I wonder if the engines were damaged? If that is a heavy maint facility they can probably do the repairs for the insurance cover and make a profit.
 
I'm no expert, but that doesn't look like it's supposed to happen.
 
A little duct tape,and a few new parts,flown in by UPS
 
They should just let John Galt take a look at it.

He could fix that right up with duct tape and a can of paint, fly it around the world for a test flight on a gallon of fuel, and be back in a couple hours in time to accept the Nobel Prize for Aviation (which he invented).
 
Supposedly the thing was being scavenged for useful parts before being stored in the desert.
 
what kind of plane is that?

It's wasn't long ago that I only saw 727s at the FedEx station at the nearby Class C airport. Wouldn't be a big loss to punch a big hole in one of those.
 
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Did the gear retract before they had the jacks in position ?

The foil covers on the engines suggest that there is merit to the scavenging story.
 
You'd think there would be safeguards against things like that.
 
FedEx uses low bidder FBO for heavy maintenance. Get what you pay for. I worked as a contractor at one in Mobile AL, my lead was a bag boy at a supermarket two years earlier and thought he knew it all.
They couldn't keep experienced mechanics. I got out after 3 weeks. That place was dangerous.
 
From what I heard, this is an A310-200 that was scrapped out. Non-FDX outfit was swapping out the gear when it shifted off the jacks. Not sure if folks were injured or not.
 
I heard that the jack is designed to support an aircraft that has been unloaded... ...
 
AuntPeggy said:
I heard that the jack is designed to support an aircraft that has been unloaded... ...
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Jacks have designated weight limits. The jack doesn't know (don't know jack?) if the airplane is loaded or not.

Also, the airplane is in maintenance, I doubt seriously FedEx leaves freight on airplanes while undergoing maintenance.
 
RotorAndWing said:
Jacks have designated weight limits. The jack doesn't know (don't know jack?) if the airplane is loaded or not.

Also, the airplane is in maintenance, I doubt seriously FedEx leaves freight on airplanes while undergoing maintenance.
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Maybe they had ballast weight issues. We almost always put a 1,000 pounds in sandbags in the cockpit areas or hang a model specific ballast weight on the nose, or roll a big weight under the nose with a truck strap over the airplane.

Airplanes do wonky things when there is no interior installed or fuel on board. Then you get a 200 pound guy or more walking on top of the horizontal stabilizer...

These range from 10,000 empty to about 35,000 empty here.
 
Then there was the China Airlines fiasco...
 

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