Hanger queen = designated vehicle of any type to be cannibalized for working parts to keep the rest of the fleet flying.
January 24, 2024 at 8:11 am
john carifidy
Not to be confused with safe queen.
January 24, 2024 at 11:50 am
JTC
Or “trailer queen”, which as to vintage tin is actually quite the opposite of a parts donor.
January 24, 2024 at 11:55 am
JTC
Stoli is inferring that there may be a sneaky reason for the misspelling…
January 24, 2024 at 3:15 pm
Bill G
Dang! I wish I was being sneaky and punny, but it’s merely another error based on excess blood in the caffeine stream. I wish I’d been sneaky there, Stoli, but truth compels me to admit error.
Crazy. Just crazy. This effort reminds me of the bridge built by diversity whack-jobs at Florida International University. No previous experience. Few with engineering backgrounds, and it collapsed and killed innocents, all in the name of DEI. The lawsuits are still pending. Remind me not to fly United ever again. Same goes for Bud Light, but damned if I don’t like an ice-cold Bud. “I was drinking a Bud Light, flying on United, the captain in drag sitting on my lap, no one in the cockpit because “cock” is prejudicial, giggling, as the plane corkscrewed into the earth because no one could fly the damned thing to a safe landing.” Survivor’s tale. (Not if it corkscrews into the ground…literary license please). Tell me it won’t happen that way.
Just FYI. The word for a place to store aircraft or other vehicles is Hangar. The word hanger is a reference to something you can hang things on. Like a coat hanger.
This is why as techs we signed for our work, a supervisor insected and passed it, and for flight essential repairs or replacements an independent check by a supervisor who hadn’t been involved in the fix was required.
Of course today, inspecting someone’s work is most likely called racist or sexist or some other -ist and a ‘dog whistle’ allegation you don’t trust them because of whatever boxes they checked on the applicsation to get a job they’re not remotely qualified for, when it’s always been a safety requirement because people make mistakes or miss something or install a bad part and it gives another chance to see that.
It’s a problem that’s been around long before DEI. Way back when I was in the Air Force, when the technicians were 95% white male and our supervisors were 100% white male, we still had mistakes slipping through multiple inspections. It was clear that some of those trusted white male supervisors were “pencil-whipping inspections” – signing off without doing the inspection. I think part of the problem was the multiple layers of inspections – if you missed or skipped something, someone else was bound to catch it. Except when everyone skipped it…
An F-111 was flying a training mission when one engine (of two) started making noises like it was about to come apart. The pilot shut it down, declared an emergency, and came around to land on the single engine. So far, it was a “routine emergency” – flights canceled due to dead engines were much too common, but as long as you got the airplane back on the ground before the other engine acted up, there was no danger. The aircraft forms were filled in with a “Red-X” grounding the aircraft until a complete unscheduled engine inspection was completed. Next day, someone signed off on the inspection and closed the Red-X. It sat on the tarmac for three more days, during which two scheduled aircraft inspections were completed, both of which required a look inside the engines.
Then the Chief Master Sergeant who was the highest ranking enlisted person over all the ground crews was walking along the flight line near midnight. He just happened to shine the light into the air intake of this engine. By the feeble beam of a flashlight from 30 feet away, he could see that there were chunks missing from the compressor. A screw had broken from a panel in front of the engine and been sucked in, where it broke a compressor blade, then the pieces of the broken blade broke other blades in a chain reaction that only stopped when the engine stopped spinning.
Three low-ranking technicians and their three middle-ranking supervisors had all signed that the engine looked OK, without looking at all. The forms all said this airplane was ready to fly, but if anyone had attempted to start it, it would have ground up more of the engine and spit out pieces of metal until they stopped.
My squadron worked on electronics, not engines, but we still felt the heat. The brass finally understood that a culture of pencil-whipping was loose on the base, and it was damned dangerous to the men who flew in the aircraft. So they loaded us up with more procedures for checking each other and making sure each man actually did his job.
And still, we had a fault code for the maintenance paperwork of TFOA=’Things Falling Off Aircraft’…wheels, panels, ordnance, doors, the odd canopy, etc.
19 Comments
United has maximized Drag over Lift. Inevitably, it will crash and burn.
Another day another near miss…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12998121/Delta-Boeing-Looses-Wheel-Tire-Atlanta.html
This gives a new meaning to the old phrase “Hanger Queen.”
I want to say “hangar” – but I’m probably being utterly clueless and missing a play on words here, somewhere.
I seek enlightenment, if so!
Hanger Queen used to apply to an aircraft that was pretty old and subject to daily repair to keep flying. I took it as such in the above comment.
Hanger queen = designated vehicle of any type to be cannibalized for working parts to keep the rest of the fleet flying.
Not to be confused with safe queen.
Or “trailer queen”, which as to vintage tin is actually quite the opposite of a parts donor.
Stoli is inferring that there may be a sneaky reason for the misspelling…
Dang! I wish I was being sneaky and punny, but it’s merely another error based on excess blood in the caffeine stream. I wish I’d been sneaky there, Stoli, but truth compels me to admit error.
Crazy. Just crazy. This effort reminds me of the bridge built by diversity whack-jobs at Florida International University. No previous experience. Few with engineering backgrounds, and it collapsed and killed innocents, all in the name of DEI. The lawsuits are still pending. Remind me not to fly United ever again. Same goes for Bud Light, but damned if I don’t like an ice-cold Bud. “I was drinking a Bud Light, flying on United, the captain in drag sitting on my lap, no one in the cockpit because “cock” is prejudicial, giggling, as the plane corkscrewed into the earth because no one could fly the damned thing to a safe landing.” Survivor’s tale. (Not if it corkscrews into the ground…literary license please). Tell me it won’t happen that way.
Just FYI. The word for a place to store aircraft or other vehicles is Hangar. The word hanger is a reference to something you can hang things on. Like a coat hanger.
And further;
The past tense of “hang” (as in execution method) is “hanged”, not “hung”.
As in;
“I hung the picture on the wall.”
vs.
“They hanged Tom Horn.”
clear ether
eon
A hanger is also a sword.
If you ever feature an accordion in the strip, please check with me first.
The sooner DEI goes away, the better…
This is why as techs we signed for our work, a supervisor insected and passed it, and for flight essential repairs or replacements an independent check by a supervisor who hadn’t been involved in the fix was required.
Of course today, inspecting someone’s work is most likely called racist or sexist or some other -ist and a ‘dog whistle’ allegation you don’t trust them because of whatever boxes they checked on the applicsation to get a job they’re not remotely qualified for, when it’s always been a safety requirement because people make mistakes or miss something or install a bad part and it gives another chance to see that.
It’s a problem that’s been around long before DEI. Way back when I was in the Air Force, when the technicians were 95% white male and our supervisors were 100% white male, we still had mistakes slipping through multiple inspections. It was clear that some of those trusted white male supervisors were “pencil-whipping inspections” – signing off without doing the inspection. I think part of the problem was the multiple layers of inspections – if you missed or skipped something, someone else was bound to catch it. Except when everyone skipped it…
An F-111 was flying a training mission when one engine (of two) started making noises like it was about to come apart. The pilot shut it down, declared an emergency, and came around to land on the single engine. So far, it was a “routine emergency” – flights canceled due to dead engines were much too common, but as long as you got the airplane back on the ground before the other engine acted up, there was no danger. The aircraft forms were filled in with a “Red-X” grounding the aircraft until a complete unscheduled engine inspection was completed. Next day, someone signed off on the inspection and closed the Red-X. It sat on the tarmac for three more days, during which two scheduled aircraft inspections were completed, both of which required a look inside the engines.
Then the Chief Master Sergeant who was the highest ranking enlisted person over all the ground crews was walking along the flight line near midnight. He just happened to shine the light into the air intake of this engine. By the feeble beam of a flashlight from 30 feet away, he could see that there were chunks missing from the compressor. A screw had broken from a panel in front of the engine and been sucked in, where it broke a compressor blade, then the pieces of the broken blade broke other blades in a chain reaction that only stopped when the engine stopped spinning.
Three low-ranking technicians and their three middle-ranking supervisors had all signed that the engine looked OK, without looking at all. The forms all said this airplane was ready to fly, but if anyone had attempted to start it, it would have ground up more of the engine and spit out pieces of metal until they stopped.
My squadron worked on electronics, not engines, but we still felt the heat. The brass finally understood that a culture of pencil-whipping was loose on the base, and it was damned dangerous to the men who flew in the aircraft. So they loaded us up with more procedures for checking each other and making sure each man actually did his job.
And still, we had a fault code for the maintenance paperwork of TFOA=’Things Falling Off Aircraft’…wheels, panels, ordnance, doors, the odd canopy, etc.