So, last week, I got to check out a McDonnell Douglas MD82... the series of aircraft was originally was released into service in 1980. American has the largest fleet of MD80 Series aircraft; close to 300. OK, enough with the history lesson.
It was really nice last week because we were told that we'd just be seeing a plane that was down for overnight scheduled maintenance. To our pleasant surprise, the host at American was able to get us onto an aircraft that was in the midst of a "heavy check." This takes place every 4-5 years on A/C (aircraft) and basically means everything is removed from the A/C. Yes, everything. ceiling panels, bag bins, galley monuments, lavatories, carpet, seats... everything. It's part of the requirements to check for corrosion and other structural safety issues to make sure the plane is still "airworthy." Seeing a plane in this state is pretty cool - I'd love to show more detailed pictures, but I'd probably get fired :-S
Over the weekend, I again got to spend some time with Christina. The poor thing had to work most of Saturday, but she was able to make it up to the northern tundra in time for cousin Chad's birthday party. Good times had by all. And he got lots of things to play with his Wii Wii.
I just grabbed my Dew to take a sip in the hotel room. I was just thinking how much I miss my Scan Speak Revelators at home... [sigh]
As I type, I'm back in Tulsa. Monday night I flew out to Atlanta (i.e. "hot-lanta" according to YASA). I woke up at 4am to start planning out this week's trip plans with our customer. We spent the morning surveying an MD88 that was down for overnight maintenance for Delta.
The A/C needed to be back in service by 2pm, so they got us out of there by lunch time so they could start buttoning things up. We were basically checking to see how similar their A/C fleet was to the American fleet that we scouted last week. For the most part, I think we're in good standing. But we didn't get to really see as much detail since the plane was in it's normal "ready for flight" configuration. There were some maintenance personnel there to help us remove ceiling panels and floor panels, but it was very hard to get the "full picture." Hopefully, we'll get a chance to see one of their fleet in more detail later on.
Today we had a meeting with Delta and our customer for the system that we've been contracted to design the installation for. Was that vague enough? And this afternoon, I caught a flight to Tulsa to prepare for doing essentially the same thing with American tomorrow.
Other than being sick of hotel beds and restaurant food, things are going well. Looking forward to getting home tomorrow night...
Signing off,
~S2H
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