Blog Discussions

       The hydraulic system is just high pressure fluid ran through many pumps and lines essentially but this system powers many of the aircrafts major components. It generates the power for the landing gears to move up and down, and many of the flight controls are powered by the hydraulic system. The system has a gage reading in the cockpit showing the pressure level so you can know if the system is failing or not, but what would happen if there was a failure? You could lose your ability to control your flight controls, or you could lose the ability to use your breaks. That’s exactly what happened in April 2018 to an airbus A320 leaving Melbourne, after takeoff they noticed low hydraulic pressure and called it in. They were advised to return to Malborne, and to land without breaks and nose steering. The made the landing safely and were towed to the terminal. The loss of hydraulic pressure was cause by a break in the line from rubbing of a bolt next to the line causi...

 There are many different environmental factors that affect an aircraft’s performance in the air, but the one that got my attention today was humidity. When going through this week’s module and reading the required reading I learned that humidity affects the plane a lot when it comes to flying. It mostly affects the engines performance by decreasing the air density. Water vapor is actually lighter than air with air having a molecular weight of 28.966 g/mol and water vapor only weighing 18.02 g/mol.  Now because the air is less dense how do we combat this to make our planes fly the way we want them too? According to the FAA you should check your density altitude regularly before flying and when you notice high humidity or reduced air density you should increase take off density, reduce rate of climb, increase TAS on approach and landing, and increase landing roll distance.  Now on the opposite end if there is no humidity or high air density your engine will be preforming m...

  When you look up the definition of ethics in Merriam-webster you'll find it means the discipline dealing with what is good and bad with moral duty and obligation. Though we don’t think about this word often the good and bad in the world and how we view it affects our every choice in life. You can have a bad day at home, and you choose if you’ll let that bad day affect you at work too. Now how does ethics pertain to the aviation profession? I’m a maintainer so I see it as if you make a mistake that will cost the company money, put someone’s life at risk, slow down production or just make you look bad it’s your good ethics that guides you to let someone know. I’ve worked at places where we provide our own tools and check our own tools, meaning the company relies on that built up trust that we will report if we are missing a tool because of our moral compasses. Because it's just our words that our tools are all there each day. Someone with bad ethics could lose a tool and not re...