Tagged, You're Out of Service!

How many times does it happen that someone tags equipment out-of-service and before it’s repaired, it’s back on the job? Sometimes with unpleasant consequences. Just recently I overheard a heated exchange between an airline supervisor responsible for aircraft loading and a ground equipment maintenance supervisor under contract to repair the airline’s equipment. It seems that a belt loader had been tagged with bad brakes but the airline, being short on equipment, pressed it back into service. While maneuvering the belt loader into position, the bad brakes did what bad brakes sometimes do — i.e. failed — and the loader hit a baggage cart, damaging it. Fortunately, no one was injured. But now the two supervisors were arguing over who was responsible for the damage. The airline supervisor was pointing the finger at the contract repair company, claiming that more timely maintenance would have prevented the accident. The maintenance supervisor was arguing that the airline was responsible for taking equipment tagged with bad brakes and ignoring the tag. This incident highlights the importance of equipment tagged out-of-service  staying out-of service. Aviation employees live in a getting-the-job-done culture, even when it’s not the safest thing to do. Clearly a baggage cart is not the most expensive equipment on an airport but the belt loader could just as easily have hit and injured someone or slid into an aircraft and done significantly more expensive damage. So — while the pressure of on-time performance is constant, in the long run, it saves more time and money to keep tagged equipment out-of-service until maintenance has checked it out and taken appropriate corrective action. Of course, it helps when contract maintenance is reliable and shows up as required.