Somebody Had A Screw Loose Here

Remember the poor guy who was stuck for five hours when the canopy of his shiny, megadollar F-22 Raptor wouldn't open, at Langley AFB, VA, in April? The mechs finally called in the fire and rescue guys, according to procedure, who cut the poor driver out with a rescue saw.

You just knew that the ultimate cause of this was going to be something stupid -- and it is. The Air Force's investigation of the problem finds that the culprit was a set of screws that had backed out of position. The chances of it happening again? Not very high... but just in case, the Air Force and Lockheed-Martin have substituted longer screws fleetwide.

The little bit of good news is that bringing the fighter back online was not as costly as feared -- repairs are now estimated at $83,000, which sounds staggering but is less than half the original estimate. And the Air Force got away with a relatively low-cost repair to the rest of the fleet -- a set of new fasteners. This is also a relief to the taxpayers.

If there's a lesson in this for those of us who don't fly or maintain $322 million dollar airplanes, it's that all the little things really count too, and there's never any harm in checking a screw or bolt to see if it's tightened or torqued right.

FMI: www.af.mil