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Here’s a fun little quiz about aircraft maintenance, and “the first flight after.”
Why do you think Wilbur Wright flew their airplane first?
A. He won the coin toss with Orville
B. He lost the coin toss with Orville
C. This was the first flight after maintenance had been done on the aircraft, and Orville knew the dangers of flying right after.
Why did Wilbur Wright crash after only three seconds?
A. Maintenance error
B. Pilot error
C. a. and b., since they are the same person
D. Midair collision
E. None of the above
We pilots might ask ourselves, “What was so dangerous about Orville Wright’s first flight? I think the answer is obvious: the aircraft had just come out of maintenance, and this was the “first flight after.”
But notice how those guys didn’t have some dangerous things in 1903 that we have today in 2024 that cause accidents:
A. Runways
B. Airports
C. Weather (wasn’t invented until 1924)
D. Other aircraft (unless you count balloons, but come on)
Fresh out of maintenance? Be skeptical.
Flying has dangers, always has, but they were just different dangers in the past.
But some of the dangers of flying persist. Like the danger of flying an aircraft the first time after maintenance has been done to it. A bad mechanic can kill you dead with an error—and they’ll go have lunch (with an ATC guy) while you take a dirt nap.
So I should ask myself, like I do if, say, the engine quits, or sputters, or the prop goes into an overspeed condition or I notice the oil temp is spiking or a cylinder is running very hot—“What changed between this flight and last?”
Did the mechanic remove—and hopefully replace—the oil? Or did they get distracted by a text or e-mail or phone call or social media post and forget to put oil in? Or forget that little “crush washer” around the oil drain plug? Did they do anything with the hydraulic system? How about the electrical system, which, it turns out, is really really complicated and has tons of wires like a pile of spaghetti and is all hidden from view, anyway, so even if I was Nikola Tesla I couldn’t figure out if there was something wrong with it, much less in flight?
Did they add fuel, or drain any? How about the control surfaces—are they:
A. attached and
B. do they move in the right directions when I move the stick and rudders?
Speaking of brakes. One time, I had a shop put new tires on my aircraft. They didn’t pump up the brakes afterwards, and I started taxiing without checking the non-existant brake pressure, my bad. I had to turn a ninety-degree corner on the taxiway to go towards the runway, and I couldn’t turn with the usual differential braking, and I noticed a large tree was approaching.
Usually this particular huge oak tree is not a factor, since it doesn’t move much, and in fact is not NOTAMed or on the airport’s ODP, since no one would be dumb enough to fly into it, much less taxi right into it.
I turned off the key and killed the engine very very close to the tree, almost close enough to use it to climb down from the cockpit, you know, kinda reach over and grab onto the bark like a squirrel and shinny down, being of course careful not to get my little foam microphone cover caught on the rough bark.
I walked back to the shop, my heart actually outside my body it was beating so hard. I was shook up. The shop’s owner? He got angry and defensive when I told him I had no brakes and almost hit a tree, telling me “Look in your logbook—what does it say we did to your aircraft? Nothing about brakes there!” Nice.
True, it was partially—or a lot—my fault for not checking the brakes (they went to the floor) before taxiing. Meanwhile, whilst the shop owner huffed and puffed, a young mechanic ran out, jumped in my aircraft, and pumped up the brakes. My heart eventually re-entered my body, but that one was a good lesson to check out everything after maintenance.
You’d think one scary “look out after maintenance” incident would be enough in a lifetime, a thing like that. But it happened again to me. And again. A major error in maintenance—not caught by me in a not-good-enough walk-around—almost got me. A mechanic worked on my aircraft for six (SIX!) months, gave it back to me with almost-empty fuel tanks. A poor preflight by me missed that one, though I caught several other things. I guessed at the amount of fuel in the mains because the gauges were bad, and believed my buddy who looked in the front aux tank, and said it was full. It was all right, if by “full” he meant “full of air.” We lived, but barely.
Another time, a mechanic installed new brakes, and reinstalled the brake lines so that they rubbed on the brake discs, and severed the lines. Again, the walkaround didn’t catch it, true. It really gets your attention when you try to stop, let me tell you. Again with the engine-shutdown parking, this time very close to a hangar.
Another mechanic forgot to fasten a bolt with a locking device on a brand-new cylinder and, well, let’s just say that if you do that, bad stuff happens. This error wasn’t visible on the preflight.
I hope NOW I’ve had enough scares to realize that I just cannot trust maintenance a hundred percent.
A non-flying story: Just the other day we were using a hydraulic scissor lift to do some work in a hangar near the ceiling. Hang some disco balls, but not for disco parties—these shiny silver balls are to scare off birds. My fellow pilot raised himself to the ceiling, but later couldn’t get the lift to come down. Nothing we could do with the device—and we tried everything, including creative cussing (C.C.)—would bring the lift down. And no escape ladder. Frustrated, my fellow pilot called down from his perch after twenty minutess “Hey, can you throw me up that rope over there so I can hang myself?”
There was no emergency hydraulic release like on a hydraulic floor jack, although there were electrical switches on the side of the machine complete with little pictures on how to electrically lower it in case of malfunction. They didn’t work.
Finally we called the people we rented it from, and they came over, opened up the inside, and found a wiring harness and plug, detached, they said, by a new young mechanic. He forgot to reattach it. Reattach it to what? To the emergency-lowering switch, the one with the idiot-proof (almost pilot-proof) pictures next to it.
Our using the lift was the first time since he had worked on it. The first “flight” after maintenance.
I had two cylinders running hot in my Lancair IVP, and had the local Fargo mechanic look under the cowling. He undid the last screw, lifted the cowling, and there was a rag stuffed in between two cylinders. Stuffed in there by the very mechanic who had taken me aside and warned me, some time before that, in a very serious tone of voice to “Do a very good walkaround after maintenance.”
I took a picture of it and sent it to the guy saying “I found your rag.” He didn’t respond yet, but that’s only been four years.
All kinds of bad stuff can happen during maintenance. In his book “Fate is the Hunter,” Ernest K. Gann told about how some mechanic added water to his engine oil—just enough so that the engine would fail after a while, but not immediately, so it would fail out in the middle of nowhere.
Yes, that’s sabotage, but it’s the same effect as if it was done accidentally.
So after maintenance, maybe I should:
A. Look closely—very, very closely—at the aircraft and the logbook after maintenance. Do my best walkaround ever.
B. Stay in the pattern on the first flight, within gliding distance of the runway.
C. Say to myself: “I bet there’s something wrong. Look for something wrong, look for something wrong. It just came out of maintenance, and they were turning nuts and bolts and screws…”
I shouldn’t assume the mechanics did it right.
These maintenance errors I described are all different mechanics, in different states—Missouri, Maryland, Virginia, West-by-god-Virginia, and Minneota, so it’s not “something in the water” that is affecting a pocket of mechanics. I watch mechanics when I enter their maintenance shops. They’re all usually checking their cell phones, from time to time, like people do nowadays. People driving cars, people flying airplanes, people working at convenience stores, hospitals.
That’s what the guy was maybe doing when he put my cowling back on with rag inside—he stuffed the rag there “just for now,” answered a text or took a call or something that broke his focus.
Can you imagine if you saw a surgeon through the glass to the operating room, operating on your child, checking their cell phone during the surgery from time to time? Or hearing the “PING!” of a text in the operating room? Then the doc, in his scrubs, mask, headgear and gloves looks at his phone and laughs, and then types on the phone, with his bloody gloves? You’d want to intervene, somehow, stop the possible malpractice, wouldn’t you?
That’s what mechanics are doing, I’ve seen them, time and again. The only difference is instead of a body being opened up, it’s an aircraft. And it’s oil and grease on their hands not blood.
So if mechanics are “human,” and can make a mistake (only we don’t call it malpractice, do we?) that’ll down my aircraft and maybe kill me, it makes sense to do a very thorough post-maintenance walkaround. And a careful post-maintenance flight.
A careful examination of the logbook, a good preflight can prevent me from taking off, having a problem, and landing, say, in Fargo, versus landing at Fargo, KFAR.
Not all mechanics get distracted by cell phones of course.
Look at the Wright Brothers—they practiced “cell phone discipline,” and refused to even own one.
- The First Flight After Maintenance, and Texting While Wrenching - July 14, 2025
- Ask Mr. Pilot - January 17, 2025
- Panic, and How To Not - October 23, 2024
Straight outta the latest issue of AOPA Pilot, Mike Busch claims that 25% of all engine failures are maintenance related but it maybe closer to 50%! Ouch.
List a Piper arrow and nearly my wife due to mechanic not following sn “airworthy directive” pertaining to the removal and replacement of the oil tube to the prop.
Cross threaded the fitting and burst during first flight after maintenance causing an inflight engine fire and seizure of the engine . Emergency landing in heavy woods followed!
Glad you got down safely. That sounded horrific.
As a flight instructor for over 50 years and still going strong I’m sending your article out to the many I have taught and those I presently teach. An excellent article, for sure. By far the best I have read. Thank you. Fly safe.
Thank you for your kind words, Thomas.
A nurse not scrubbing for the procedure monitors our phones in the OR. Contact with a phone would obviously break the sterile field. Mechanics should join their clients on the first flight following maintenance, and anyone serious about flying ought to do an A&P. Wouldn’t leave the home drome without it.
Or let’s say in a labor and delivery room after completing a “C” section the nurse tells the attending doctor that the surgical towel count was off by 1. He tells the nurses to do a recount and cleans up and leaves. Patient goes to recovery and starts a fever.
X-Ray reveals the missing surgical towel. BINGO! Back to sergury to remove the towel. There is NEVER a problem until a human being is involved…..
First post maint flt is always solo, day/vmc, up over field above pattern, invest time to hit entire speed range and maneuvers. Don’t have time for that? then you don’t have time to take family/friends up either.
Owner assisted maint and annual will teach you a lot about your acft…and if you’re flying a bug smasher, there isn’t that much to learn on the things that keep you airborne (pulleys/cables/pushrods, basic hyds, eng, mags)…if your time is too valuable for that, then you probably have the $$ to hire a charter instead.
The only engine in flight fire I’ve ever had was on takeoff, in a just annualled C-172. Did a thorough walk around (it was a checkout for the club), confirmed the pieces were attached and rigged correctly, engine started, sounded ok. So, we taxied out to the runup area.
Did the pre-takeoff checklist, RPM, Mags, all ok. Then, carb heat: Drop was within specs. Took off, and the engine started burning. Landed straight ahead (it was at Vandenberg AFB, 9000 feet of runway and we started at the end, not the middle), and shut it all down.
Turns out the mechanic had put a red shop rag in the air intake. Running the engine sucked it down out of sight, doing the carb heat check sucked it into the heat exchanger and that’s all it took.
Oh, and the checkout? We had the chief pilots’ 2 kids in the backseat. The oldest was maybe 8. No presure.
After a 40 year career as a naval technical officer I became a flight instructor. I tell all my students, and anyone to whom I administer a club check ride that they’re not checking to see if the aircraft is safe for flight. They’re checking to make sure it isn’t going to kill them.
I had an easy catch after annual. I had reported rain water leaks around the rear window on the mighty C-150 I was flying. The mechanic used sealant on every surface or joint he could find, and in the process managed to glue the flaps in place. This was an old C-150 with manual flaps, so when I couldn’t lower the flaps for the preflight I knew something wasn’t right. Oops.
When I was younger, 50 years ago, I worked at an aircraft shop. We always prided ourselves on doing the best and most meticulous maintenance but our chief pilot always went over everything we did with extreme caution. We kinda took this as an insult to our work and one day we asked him why he didn’t trust us. He told us that one time he was flying cross country in a Cessna 172 and there was a noise coming from the left wing. He landed at nearest FBO and found a crack in the left wing spar. The mechanic supposedly fixed it and returned the plane to him. Upon his inspection he found that the mechanic had just drilled a hole thru the wing spar at the end of the crack to stop it from cracking any farther. That was all he had to say and we never questioned his double checking our work again. When your the pilot in charge it is all on you. Trust no one because your not being able to fly an airplane because it won’t fly is only pilot error if you got in it and took off. Learn mechanics and tell your A&P person this story if they feel challenged. Do you check for lock wires being twisted in the right direction and not being over twisted and broken? A little thing like that could cause a bolt to loosen and get you killed so please be anal about your preflight inspections.
“Lock Wire Twist-Direction” would be a cool band name. Some stuff you can’t see, like stuff inside the engine that wasn’t done right.
I had no idea weather wasn’t invented until 1924!
Yup. By the way, the Earth is flat and it’s only 4000 years old.
After a repair of a yoke light, on my first flight making ‘touch and go’ practices, i noted the yoke was not smooth on takeoff. i went to another airport and prepared to land. On descent at the time to flair I could not pull the yoke back and was heading for the ground at 70 kt. Fortunately, I was with my instructor and he kept saying “pull it back.” When I told him I couldn’t, he grabbed there right sided yoke and pulled hard…there was a enan sound but we made a smooth landing. In checking the main yoke we found the plastic inline fuse holder was caught in the yoke. The maintance did not secure the cable after repair of the light. I am sure we would have had a fatal crash! and the NTSB would have determined a “PILOT ERROR” The FBO denied any responsibility!!!
I fly a float plane in SE Alaska. I have a 3 step procedure after annual/100 hr or any invasive maintenance starting with a solid preflight and run up while the plane is still on land, with eyes especially on what had been worked on. Then into the water it goes for start up, warm up, run up, taxi and a short solo flight around the waterway back to my own ramp, always over water, followed by a post flight check. Then another flight, usually solo, occasionally with my aviator dog “Magneto”, where I go out for an hour plus and check all systems and perform a suite of basic maneuvers (power on/off stalls, slow flight, steep turns, Vx & Vy climb, etc) and then operate at cruise altitudes switching fuel tanks and operating at various power settings. I consider this 3rd step my functional test flight (FTF) and make any notes on it. Now I’m confident enough to take my bride or friends with me on a remote cabin trip, or to fly to another seaplane base in SE Alaska where I may or may not find A&P assistance.
After 25 years of sitting unprotected in the Indiana sun, my 1968 Cardinal had a severely glazed windscreen and I decided to replace it at the annual. At liftoff on a 3000 ft runway, I found I had no radio, no airspeed indicator, and no flaps. Too late to land straight ahead, I went around and made a high-speed, but safe landing (I had practiced no-faps landings for just such an event). Turned out the mechanic had used a 2″ drill bit to remove the windscreen frame rivets. Fortunately, he had missed the fuel line that coursed through the same port-side door frame during the windscreen replacement.
Granted the airspeed might not come alive until starting your takeoff roll, but you should have noticed that before you rotated or else you would have aborted. Right? How did you get the weather or ATC clearance without a radio? Does your preflight not include checking the flaps or did you just not do a preflight?
As I mechanic and a pilot, I see both sides, but there sure seems to be a lot of anger being directed at the mechanics here. Any mistake is one too many, but unfortunately they do sometimes happen. Usually they are caught before things escalate, but not always. However, I don’t know any mechanic that would intentionally do something that would jeopardize lives. Can’t say that about the Air India or the Germanwings or the Swiss Ju-52 pilot or all the other pilots that just want to get home and are willing to fly into questionable weather or just simply run the plane out of fuel in the process. Depending on the extent of the maintenance, I would always want to go up on the first flight after maintenance to ensure the issue is fixed, but I don’t want to do it with a reckless pilot.
As a pilot and aircraft owner, I work on my own flying junk. Anytime I go into an automotive repair place or aircraft repair hanger and the policy there is; cell phones and customers are not allowed to see or talk to any of the technicians from 9 to 5, That’s the place I want working on my stuff.
“Flying Junk”— good name for a band or restaurant.
That is the place….. yea you right.!
I’m of the “If it works, don’t fix it” school. This is why I hate annuals, especially if you’re only flying your airplane 25 to 50 hours a year. The inspection is riskier than to continue flying without one, in my humble, non-A&P opinion. The regulation seems designed to stuff money into the pockets of the mechanics, thought it’s not their fault for the rule. Still, I wish the interval was based on hours flown, and not just a fixed, once a year, frequency, regardless of flight time. Or something like, every 150 hours, or 2.5 years, whichever comes sooner. Once a year, no matter how much you’ve flown the airplane, just seems over-kill. And the pun is intended. Thanks for your humorous, well-written article!
A really great cautionary tale.
Matt, great article…I enjoyed the humor you interspersed. I am building an aircraft and it occurred to me that as a builder, I do get distracted by cellphone activity. Good heads-up for me!
Mike
IF YOU WANT SOMETHING DONE RIGHT, THEN DO IT YOURSELF.
Matt, kudos for your honesty. But how did you do the run up without using brakes. Or did you skip it too?
Seems like a cascade of rookie errors.
Good lesson for all.
Preflight like your life depends on it, because it does.
Great article with a humorous style that drives home a serious lesson. We just emerged from 5 months of troubleshooting an engine that wouldn’t make it past 70% in level flight – turned out to be sticking valves and required a new cylinder (I can hear the groans in the audience already). Good news story – problem finally solved but we spent the first two hours (literally) orbiting our home field at 3,000 ft to be on the safe side. We trust our mechanic but he’s just human like the rest of us!
As a pilot and A&P/IA mechanic, I concur with the summary of this article. Be vigilant, sadly there are those amongst us (in the A&P ranks) that do not take their jobs seriously enough. Complacency and lack of proper oversight and instruction by supervisory maintenance personnel are often root causes. Quality control is also key, and unfortunately there is not enough QC taking place in general aviation. I’ve worked in GA for 13 years, and now corporate aviation for the last 3. The maintenance tasks performed are of equal importance to implementing effective quality control practices, appropriate for the performed maintenance. There is no excuse PERIOD for maintenance-induced failures or damage to occur. As an owner, know your aircraft throughly, and don’t be afraid to ask specific questions of your mechanic about work performed. If your mechanic gets defensive or doesn’t like you asking questions, that mechanic needs to be taken aside for some remedial instruction (preferably by other, experienced maintenance personnel). One thought comes to my mind: If you’re not comfortable with the answers you’re getting from your current mechanic, consider finding another reputable mechanic to at least come do a once-over as a “second set of eyes” on the work performed BEFORE you go flying, especially after heavy/invasive maintenance. Second opinions can be worth a lot. (I realize finding other reputable mechanics who aren’t booked a long ways out in their schedules can be a chore, especially these days. But consider: what is your family’s or your life worth?)