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Official development blog for the PARANOIA roleplaying game. No description is available at your security clearance. The Computer is your friend.

Monday, January 08, 2007

Something falls off 

Shanghai Daily reports a China Southern Airlines Boeing MD-82 airplane was preparing to taxi onto the runway at Shanghai's Pudong International Airport this past Thursday night when suddenly its tail fell off:
A security inspector noticed the tail cone of the Boeing MD-82 airliner suddenly dropped to the ground at around 6:50pm just before the plane was to taxi to the runway. [...]

Inspectors later found more than a dozen screws linking the tail cone to the rest of the aircraft had fallen out.

An investigation by the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China found that an employee of a food supply company mistakenly touched a handle that dislodges the tail cone and extends an inflatable slide so that passengers can be evacuated in the event of an accident, sources said.

The handle wasn't fully moved, so the slide didn't inflate.

The handle is located in a remote part of the plane that could not be reached by passengers, according to an airline official who asked not to be named. The official said a final pre-flight check, which had not yet been performed before the problem was noticed, would include an inspection of the handle to ensure it was in the proper place.

The Shanghaiist blog offers insightful commentary: "Is it really possible that an accidental bump of a handle can cause properly inserted screws to fall out of a passenger airplane? Shouldn't it be more difficult to remove the tail of an airplane than, say, open a pack of airline peanuts? Why did it take a 'security inspector' to notice that a sizeable chunk of the plane had fallen off? Why is a food person anywhere near a handle that makes the plane fall apart?"

This incident's relevance to Troubleshooter travel in Alpha Complex transtubes is left as an exercise to the PARANOIA Gamemaster.

I have a dread presentiment "Something falls off" may become a regular feature....
Posted by: Allen Varney / 1:29 PM

Comments:
China Southern.
I'd like to say I'm surprised, but I'm not.

Scary thing is I actually fly with them pretty often.
# posted by Blogger TM : March 21, 2007 10:59 PM
 
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