Went down a year ago. Just heard on P B S news hour and C B S national news that the emergency beacon battery expired in-December 2012!
Some maintenance chief some where needs his head handed to him-that or the Q C guy. I was an aircraft mechanic in the Navy-we had check lists for everything. Q C guy HAD to be way smarter than the mechs. RIDE SAFE.
May not be the maintenance folks. There's several different ways to control time-limited components. One way is to track them and when they're close to coming due, the planning folks issue add an item to the work package to change the component out. If they screwed up there would have been nothing issued to maintenance directing the replacement. Another way is to put a task in a periodic check telling the mechanic to check the due date on the unit and replace it if the expiration date is withing so many days (at least enough to make it to the next check). If that was the case and it didn't get done, then that was on the technician.
-RP
At sea or on land A/C recovered the pilot filled out the yellow sheet. Work orders generated from pilots yellow sheet. E-7 handed out work assignments. Whether it was R & R a part or inspect something Q C had to sign off. Generally didn't get another assignment til Q/C signed off first job. Granted-this was 1964 thru 1968 but the Navy thrived on paper trails!
One thing I do remember-the greener or more junior the pilot the more ambiguous the write up.
Or going the other way with too much info.
I was lucky my entire hitch-any squadron I was in NEVER dumped a bird while I was part of that squadron. I have helped track paper in other squadrons that had dumped a bird.
RIDE SAFE.
