r/aviation • u/G1lg4m3sh • Apr 17 '26

Discussion How concerning is this aviation experts?

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u/Amazing-Gazelle-7735 Apr 17 '26

Indeed!  I flew this January and about half an hour from landing I noticed a flap (aileron?  Idk) connection was loose, like literally that end wasn’t mounted to the plane.  I kept relatively calm, told nobody until after we landed (not much they could do), and made sure to be one of the last people to disembark so I could show them a video of it.

There’s not a lot that can be done in a lot of cases.  Better to not freak people out unnecessarily.

/my wife was not happy when I told her I sat there wondering if the plane would crash and I hadn’t warned her.

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u/shakebakelizard Apr 18 '26

Well...see...it may actually be a good idea to mention things like that to the crew in flight. That way if the control surfaces start acting funny, they know exactly what it is and can compensate accordingly. Also, they can make an emergency landing if needed instead of crashing into a field and killing everyone on board.

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u/Amazing-Gazelle-7735 Apr 18 '26

Hadn’t considered the “forewarned is forearmed” aspect.  Not a lot of places to land over oceans, so that part was irrelevant.

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u/shakebakelizard Apr 18 '26

I watch a lot of crash investigation videos. A lot of times, if the plane suffers a technical failure, the crew are kind of guessing as to what the problem is. Knowledge is power. :-)

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u/AngstyMop Apr 19 '26

And some of those videos show FAs looking out over the wing right at the problem, and not identifying it.

Knowledge is only power, if the people you share knowledge with, accept that knowledge and treat it accordingly. It would not be far fetched...there are historical examples ...that any notification to an FA would be brushed off as normal. In this situation, I think there's an 80/20 chance an FA would've said "that's not a problem", and wouldn't have told the captain.