That one Friday at Atlanta Hartsfield when every single radio fail light popped off at once

I'm on the fence about whether a chaos shift or a smooth shift teaches you more. Last Friday we had 3 planes come in back to back with communication failures. The first was a simple transmitter swap on a CRJ, took 20 minutes. Then a 737 showed up with a total VHF no-go, traced it to a bad coax cable behind the cockpit panel. The third was an A320 that had me chasing ghost faults for 2 hours before I found a pinched wire in the tail. My lead said I handled it better than a normal day because the troubleshooting forced me to think faster. But I feel like I missed half the steps I usually double check when under that pressure. Has anyone else noticed their error rate goes up or down during those wild back to back days?

2 comments

2 Comments

kelly_craig3d agoMost Upvoted

Jump straight into my take: those high pressure days definitely teach you more about the plane, but your error rate goes up too. I remember one time we had three MEL write-ups hit at once and I forgot to tag a circuit breaker. My lead caught it, but man that was close. So yeah you learn faster, but you also miss steps you normally wouldn't.

robinson.hannah3d ago

Yeah I've done the same thing @kelly_craig, forgot to safety wire a cotter pin once during a quick turn. Now I always do a slow walk around the whole plane before closing anything up, even if we're running late.