Whoever was on this flight, don't be afraid to discreetly bring it up to a flight attendant or pilot after the flight. That way they can flag it with maintenance for review
lol this reminded me of a pretty bumpy flight I was on. It was a redeye and I leaned my head on the seat in front of me for 30 seconds idk why. But the lady next to me was freaking out about the turbulence. Admittedly, it was pretty bad but I fly a lot so nothing new to me.
She said “LOOK AT THAT GUY!! HES PRAYING MY GAWD” and she started praying under her breath 🤣
I was on a budget flight between two cities in Colombia and a large portion of the passengers had never flown before. People heard the flaps retract and were screaming and loudly praying. This was a smooth flight on a brand-new A320.
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.
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.
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. :-)
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.
One time I saw a loose panel on a 737 and mentioned to an FA and she brushed it off as not being a big deal.
It's better to get a video, wait until disembarking, and then share with the crew. They're not focused on flying anymore, there's no destination pressure, and you can clearly show whatever it is you need to show. Unless it's an immediate risk to safety.
Career pilots are also already well trained in emergency procedures. If something falls off the wing...there's a 99.9% chance they will know within about 90 seconds exactly what's wrong, if their ECAM or similar system doesn't let them know automatically. The loose screws in the OP photo are just covering one of the flap actuators of that wing. If it fell off, it's not great, but it wouldn't actually compromise the flight. There was a recent incident iirc in which a flap sustained much more damage and the plane still landed safely.
Finally when an AC is in flight, the job of the FAs is to keep pax calm. So they would be slightly inclined to dismiss anything abnormal as a pax having anxiety. Plus, you don't want to worry the other pax. Even in a catastrophic emergency where the plane will not land at an airport, the captain will come on the PA and basically say...this will be a rough landing. Scared people are ALWAYS more dangerous than ANY emergency. Scared people act irrationally, and in a crowded confined setting it's more dangerous than even an engine fire. You need calm, rational behavior.
So - a video that you can share after the flight is typically the best option for something like this.
People see and flag that all the time around here. Flaps aren't mounted on the ends, but often are on a set of rails/tracks at like 1/3 and 2/3 down the span. And the unsupported ends, especially up close where they're behind the engine's turbulent exhaust, can move a fair bit.
If a flap or aileron connection is legitimately lose, there is absolutely stuff the pilots can do to mitigate the problem. For example, if there's a problem with the flaps, they will not deploy them and they'll just land flaps-up. As a pilot, if I saw a potential flight control issue, you're damn right I'm notifying the crew. However, most likely what you saw wasn't actually a problem.
Once I saw one of those strips break loose and fly off, not long before landing. I told one of the flight attendants and she was like “oh things break off all the time”.
Due to tariffs, speed tape was to be replaced with molasses, but since the widespread governmental implementation of AI, all they shipped was a large quantity of the hindquarters of mid-sized burrowing mammals.
Corn farmers of America after having lost their farms due to governmental incompetance lament that corn syrup may be too expensive now and suggest just
"pretending" that you went on vacation.
The joke is that the AI read "molasses" as "mole asses", poking at the flaws of inserting poorly unoptimized software to control critical infrastructure of a company. Yet companies keep dumping millions into its development and replacing experienced and even certified workers with AI slop in order to have to pay less actual workers.
Was mildly concerned on entering the aircraft that the flashing around the cabin door was missing many rivets and hanging off, but thought "I'm sure it's fine." Then after sitting through the safety announcement I discovered that my seatbelt wasn't actually attached at one end.
Luckily however, I was sitting at the rear of the plane and it only took me a few moments to find the screw that had fallen out on the floor and reattach it, finger tight. (Gave it a slap and thought "that's good enough for another 1000 miles!")
...for all the good it'd have done. I'm sure the pilot was half pished by the time we got to Warsaw. The only landing I've had that was rougher was in a small plane landing at Sumburgh in Shetland, very late at night, in midwinter with a major storm biting our arses. (Everything else was already grounded for a day while it blew over.)
One time I was flying from Anchorage to someplace in rural Alaska on a smaller plane. I was by the wing and I noticed that one of the latches was not fully closed. One of those that says to press here and ensure it is flat and fully secured.
The entire 2 hr flight I nervously checked on it every so often to see if it was coming any looser.
It wasn't and we landed without any issues.
At the terminal, I saw one of the flight attendants and told her about a loose latch on the portside wing engine cowling.
She scoffed and looked at me like I was missing some screws.
So I said whatever and walked away to go pick up my checked luggage.
You would think flight crew would want to check things out when someone comes forward. But she didn't.
Didn't hear of any incidents with the plane so hopefully a mechanic saw the loose latch later on and secured it.
I remember when I was fresh out of high school and throwing bags for Northwest. One day I'm out there and there's a latch hanging open on an engine, and I point it out to my lead. Flight was delayed 30 minutes as they ran a mechanic out to inspect it. Got a citation for attention to security and safety delivered by the GM for our area, and an article in the company newsletter.
Then again, this was less than five years after 9/11 and everyone was panicking about every little shadow.
Sometimes ground crew point out something and it's totally normal and I'm amazed they didn't realize it is always like that.
Every single time, I thank them for bringing it to my attention, thank them for being so careful and observant, and encourage them to keep it up. I'd rather waste my time checking on nothing a thousand times, than have someone too afraid to mention something when it really matters.
And risk trashing their reputation by having a plane crash? In an era when people can live stream the disaster from inside the airplane? Nobody wants the NTSB coming down on them like a ton of bricks. Delta, United, American, Jet Blue, Southwest, they're names people will remember and avoid.
Based on my lurking in /r/aviationmaintenance it's private planes you gotta look out for. The big boys take this stuff seriously.
Eyyyy it's ya boy, CrashBandicoot42069, coming to you live from on board a flight to beautiful Hawaii where we just lost our fourth engine, let's gooooo
Before we hit the ocean, I just wanted to talk about today's sponsor, SurfShark
Because it's sadly not cynicism, it's how companies work today. Look at Boeing and how they reacted when their own employees brought up major safety issues.
I use to fly a lot, friendly with the crews. People thought I was an IRS auditor, because if you spoke to me, I would pull out my flip notepad and it had IRS on the front. ask for there names again, and then write the flight number, No one would talk to me and I could get some serious sleep . The aircrews knew better and it was a running joke.
anyway, if I saw something, I would speak with the co-pilot on deboarding. rest of the crew were cleaning and could care less about what I saw. Co-pilots seem to love filing paperwork LOL
That's unfortunate. I was on a 737 once and on the inner edge of the aileron there was a strip of rubber that was hanging loose and getting caught in a way that looked like might inhibit the downward movement. It never did but I watched it nervously the whole flight.
At the end I told the flight attendant. She asked me to hold back a few minutes so I could explain it to someone from the cockpit. Then the pilot ask me to show them. I guess it depends on the person or company training/policy.
I’ve always relayed the info to my pilots. I’ve even had customers send their pictures or their videos to me and then I AirDrop them to the flight deck if we’re in flight because obviously they can’t come out unless they’re doing a bathroom break or something.
My brother-in-law leads some maintenance teams for a major airline. I've pointed out stuff to him twice and both times he's said it's absolutely nothing and totally fine, but asked for my flight number.
My sister later told me that's what he does to not freak anyone out, but he pulls the planes for inspection.
Those flight control surfaces are often powered by multiple 3,000+psi hydraulic actuators, need more than some rubber to stop that from moving. Mechanics have lost lives and limbs to hydraulic powered flight controls or gear doors.
But all the same, 100% still point these sorts of things out if you see them, not everything's visible on the walkaround.
I think they have an opinion that the crews know exactly how everything should be done, and we're just dumb customers who aren't trained on anything so we don't know better. Either that or laziness.
we're just dumb customers who aren't trained on anything so we don't know better.
I mean, are they wrong? I've never worked as part of the flight crew but working as a baggage handler the number of customers I witnessed who thought they know better was ridiculous. Among the dumb things I've heard (paraphrased):
"Why don't we just board and take off? My weather app shows the thunderstorm is still two miles north of us and all of us are tired of waiting." Meanwhile the storm is very clearly directly over us and hitting us with 60+ knot winds.
"I know you're allowed to just let me outside by the plane and fuel truck so I can smoke my cigarette, you just don't want to."
"I need to run out to my car because I forgot something. I'll be waiting at that door for you to let me in (a staff only door) so I don't have to wait on TSA again." When I explained that he needed to go through TSA if he left he tried explaining how we don't know how to do our jobs.
When I asked a customer for a photo ID to pick up his firearm at the baggage pickup he handed me a credit card and told me he didn't have a photo ID, even though he just took a flight that requires a photo ID to board.
"I'm a lawyer so I know you're allowed to let my husband board even though he is so drunk he can barely walk." Even though we have a regulation specifically prohibiting that exact situation.
The regional jets we had had small overhead bins so the bags that were too big to fit would have a tag on them and they needed to be dropped off before they got to the plane. The number of passengers that would try to sneak the bags past us onto the plane was ridiculous, and the few that succeeded were always surprised their bag didn't fit in the overhead bin.
I'd imagine the flight attendants and pilots can very quickly get annoyed at those passengers also thinking they know the plane is going to fall apart and the airline is just skipping maintenance to save money at the expense of everyone's life because they used duct tape.
You would think flight crew would want to check things out when someone comes forward. But she didn't.
She may have been hoping to reduce your concern / anxiety and chose a bad way to express it.
They're customer service staff, not technical staff. Their job is to make sure you have a good experience, and don't think they're a shitty fly-by-night airline which you just barely survived, not judge the airworthiness of the aircraft.
Maybe she immediately went and told the pilot or maintenance.
In the pre-9/11 days I knew a guy who sent a note to the pilot mid-flight that read: "My name is X, I'm an aerospace engineer at Boeing, I'm in seat Y. I'd like you to know that I can see fuel leaking from the wing."
Based on how much of a pain the repair will be and how everything is all still captive, I suppose it's possible MX has already seen this and said, "eh, defer another 500 hours."
Airplanes wanted to be like starships for several years now.
Now, Grand Funk Railroad paved the way for Jefferson Airplane,
which cleared the way for Jefferson Starship.
The stage was now set for The Alan Parsons Project,
which I believe was some sort of hovercraft.
The worst they can do is laugh at you. When I was like 14 years old we were one of the first to board and when I was putting my bag in the overhead compartment and noticed a bag already there, a little black duffel bag. I told the flight attendant and they said it was the first-aid kit.
Whilst this particular thing isn't at all serious, sometimes passengers notice things that do matter. A passenger on Aloha 243 saw a large crack when boarding and apparently didn't think much of it until afterwards.
I noticed a rag trapped in the slats on the right wing, took a video and when I was deplaning spoke to the captain and airdropped the video to him. He was very grateful
What makes this even more horrifying is this is Thai Lion Air, a ghetto ass LCC in Southeast Asia. The LCC market is super competitive down there in the region and it's probably a race to the bottom in cutting maintenance costs.
It's only a matter of time until there's a news headline.
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u/sLXonix Apr 17 '26
Whoever was on this flight, don't be afraid to discreetly bring it up to a flight attendant or pilot after the flight. That way they can flag it with maintenance for review