I used to hate troubleshooting intermittent faults on the 737NG comm radios.

For years, I'd just swap boxes and hope, but after a plane in Phoenix sat for two days with a 'no fault found', our lead showed me how to use the onboard maintenance computer to pull the specific fault history from the last ten flights. Now I check that log first every time, and it's saved me hours of guesswork. What's your go-to method for chasing down those ghost faults on older Boeing systems?

3 comments

3 Comments

charlesj466d ago

Honestly, that maintenance computer log can send you down a rabbit hole. You pull up ten flights of faults and now you're chasing a code from last Tuesday that has nothing to do with today's problem. I've seen guys waste half a shift because the computer said there was a history, but the real issue was a loose connector they could have found in five minutes with a basic wiggle test. Sometimes all that data just overcomplicates a simple fix.

john_dixon611mo ago

Oh man, that maintenance computer trick is a lifesaver. I got burned the same way on a pesky ADF fault until an old-timer showed me the wire-by-wire resistance checks in the manual.

sean_foster521mo ago

It's the same with anything complicated. People rely on the digital readout until it's wrong, then the basic manual steps save you. We forget how to check the simple stuff first.