14 people died in a plane crash. It was its second flight from one city to another in the United States. A short flight, the second flight of the day and it was to Texas. But something went wrong; the plane destabilized, exploded in midair and plummeted until exploding again on the ground.
Now came the inquiries, what, or who, is the reason behind this terrible accident? Several members of the specialized technical personnel are deployed, engineers, supervisors, security personnel, etc.
While some investigate the accident site, possible causes begin to emerge. The black box with the tape is intact, they only hear when the copilot makes a comment on speed and then they hear objects hitting the cockpit walls. The pilots say nothing more. The speed of the fall does not give way to any words.
Now they have to find the supervisors, inspectors and mechanics who worked with the arrangements of the plane before the flight. Everything is a part of the protocol. There are personnel in charge of something at night and then one team hands leaves to let the other work… but they forgot about something before they gave the job to the other team.
Step by step they find out what the mechanics each shift did.
Starting with the first team, their supervisor wanted to help his team and loosened some nuts on the left wing of the plane. He left the screws loose for the next shift to remove, but when the next shift came they decided to work only on the right side because they couldn't handle both. It was already getting too late and there was nothing written about what their supervisor did on the other side. The only thing the supervisor wrote was that he helped his team finish the job.
An order from the supervisor of the night shift was enough to only work on the right side. But what happened to the loose screws on the left side?
It was not recorded that there were loose screws on the left wing of the plane.
The plane lost its left wing in midair and collapsed. 14 people died because no one reported that the bolts on the left wing of the plane were loosened.
That was a failure in communication, a failure to report detailed information from one supervisor to the other. He didn’t think it would be that important to tell the other supervisor about his work. This simple detail was enough for no one to follow up or continue with what he started.
And because of that, Continental Express Flight 2574 no longer exists.
Errors like these really should be recorded during maintenance, really. I bet now they double check all their mechanical work