Found corrosion hiding under a perfectly clean panel yesterday

I was doing a routine C-check on a 737 at the hangar in Tulsa and pulled a belly panel that looked spotless from the outside. Underneath, there was a patch of intergranular corrosion the size of my palm that had been eating through the stringer for months. Anyone else run into hidden damage that looked fine until you pulled the fasteners?

2 comments

2 Comments

grantw412d ago

Guess maintenance likes playing hide and seek with the expensive stuff. Bet that panel looked real proud of itself too.

cameron_hernandez692d ago

Oh man, that reminds me of the time I spent two hours hunting down a missing grounding strap on a backup generator. Turned out someone used it to tie a trash bag shut in the break room. I found it when I went to throw away my coffee cup. The panel probably was feeling proud, sitting there all fixed up while the real issue was somewhere else entirely. Maintenance crews get creative sometimes, but not always in the ways you'd hope.