Damaged wing on an Airbus

[BarryP]

Turned up at Luton on Tues for a Monarch flight, walked out to the plane and noticed a large dent on the leading edge of the wing, halfway between the engine and fuselage, about 20cms long and 2.5-3cms in at the deepest point ! It had been covered in what appeared to be a shiny, aluminium type sheeting and then probably bonded on as there was no sign of any rivets. I was surprised it hadn't been taken out of service and repaired with this amount of damage, how bad does it need to be before they take a no fly decision?

[Abagnale]

I'd look worried when the engineers look worried. They're made of tough stuff.

[Keep it stiff]

A friend had not long taken a seat for a Birmingham Jersey flight when he noticed dripping from a wing. It crossed his mind to report it to the crew but decided not to thinking he would look daft as it would no doubt be explained as condensation. Five minutes or so later there came an announcement that due to a technical the passengers would need to return to the waiting area, said technical fault was a fuel leak! Moral of the tale, better to risk looking daft!

[TheEnd]

Good old speed tape
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_tape

[Ginetta G15 Girl]

TheEnd said:

Good old speed tape

Brilliant stuff for patching up exhaust silencer boxes!

[S3_Graham]

TheEnd said:

Good old speed tape
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_tape

I love speed tape. Has got me out of many an AOG.

in answer to your question. There is a structural repair manual that will have a section about 'allowable damage' in there you'll find out what allowed and whats groundable.

[DeuxCentCinq]

TheEnd said:

Good old speed tape
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_tape

I would love to be able to post some of the bodge fixes I've seen shared around that have been done with this stuff. I've only ever trusted it myself on cars, but I've seen some crazy patches done with it. Heard from one engineer in Lagos that he started to refuse to lend any more speed tape to the local airlines' guys as their planes were "mostly tape"...

[sneijder]

All depends if they're going home or not.

I've pointed out a tyre down to the threads and an oil leak on an engine so bad the cowling was covered recently.

[jamiem555]

It's great stuff. It's called speed tape for a reason. I think it's rated to 400 kts. I'm sure the fix you saw was allowable in the structure repair manual and it will be repaired at the next big service.

[IforB]

BarryP said:

Turned up at Luton on Tues for a Monarch flight, walked out to the plane and noticed a large dent on the leading edge of the wing, halfway between the engine and fuselage, about 20cms long and 2.5-3cms in at the deepest point ! It had been covered in what appeared to be a shiny, aluminium type sheeting and then probably bonded on as there was no sign of any rivets. I was surprised it hadn't been taken out of service and repaired with this amount of damage, how bad does it need to be before they take a no fly decision?

A lot worse than that!

There is always a lot of swearing when any skin damage is found, but as long as it isn't in a place that is a nightmare to get to (i.e being somewhere that you need to do something like take a galley out to get behind it) then it can be easily assessed and rectification decided upon.

Leading edge damage often looks a lot worse than it really is. I'll check when i get into the office what the issue is if you want. Where were you flying to and I'll look it up?

[RobGT81]

It will do a trip!

If its got speed tape on, then at least someone has had a look at it. It's all those little cracks that you can't see that you want to be worrying about.

[G600]

You're allowed some pretty big dents but only for x number of flights/hours generally.

[onyx39]

Keep it stiff said:

A friend had not long taken a seat for a Birmingham Jersey flight when he noticed dripping from a wing. It crossed his mind to report it to the crew but decided not to thinking he would look daft as it would no doubt be explained as condensation. Five minutes or so later there came an announcement that due to a technical the passengers would need to return to the waiting area, said technical fault was a fuel leak! Moral of the tale, better to risk looking daft!

Reminds me of a documentary about the Concorde crash. Apparently a similar thing almost happened when leaving JFK. Passenger saw fuel p1ssing out of the wing, and called a stewardess. She dismissed it and he had to kick up a real stink before they (rightly) abandoned take off)