Gilbert..... You OK?????

[customsteve01]

We had two Aircraft damaged pretty bad last night in Tulsa was just wondering how you made out being that your not to far from there.

There was a really nasty thunderstorm that rolled thru the Mid-West last night. From what we hear The area around the airport in Tulsa took some wind damage, as in windows and roofs.

Here is a picture of one of our planes. The picture is not good but you can get the idea. The damage that is on the engine cowling was caused when it hit the airstart cart that is sitting beside the plane. Notice how far the back of the plane had to come down to meet with the cart. Also you can't see this in the picture but the right wingtip and leading edge are trashed from hitting the ground.

Steve

[customsteve01]

fzninvt is going to try and get ahold of Gilbert today. I haven't heard if anyplace other than around the airport sustained any damage. I talked to a crew in Wichita Ks. and he said they had 60 knt wings last night. I guess we need to get ready for bust thunderstorm season.

Here is a better picture of the engine that struck the air cart. After evaluation we found out the the outer by-pass duct around the engine is destroyed and we have to replace it.

[chops]

That reminds me. Hurricane season will probably be knocking at our door real soon down here in Florida as well.

That plane had to be doing some serious tipping to reach down to that air cart. Dang! []

[Gilbert]

Everything's cool over here. The trees in my back yard did some howling in the wind, but thankfully, that was about it. Have not really had much of a life lately. Way too much work on my desk.

The really bad stuff passed just to our south. And as typical, the storms come from the southwest, and head toward the northeast. Dropped a few sprinkles of pea sized hail.

The damage to the turbine cowling looks superficial, was it limited to the skin only? What's the cost for something like that?

[customsteve01]

Well the engine damage is way more than superficial. The engine is trashed, the outer by-pass duct has a hole in it. If you look at the picture (i know its not a very good one) you can see a shiney metal box that has some connectors on it. Well it is the excitor box (it runs the ignitors while starting) it punched a hole in the by-pass duct. You can also see the top connector was sheered off. From what we hear just about everything on that side of the engine is either broken or bent. I will post some more pic's if we get some of the engine with the cowl open.

The base price for a Rolls-Royce AE3007 is around $500.000.00. But we lease them in a deal called Power by the Hour so I really don't know what this will cost us. I know that we are self insured with a diductable of around 2 million and I am pretty sure each aircraft will surpass that in total repairs. We will fix what we have to in Tulsa and then ferry them to one of our heavy mx bases to finish them up.

They should both be back to flying the line by next week. We can't aford to have them down for very long, we just started our summer schedule and we really don't have any spare aircraft so we pulled two of our heavy checks to fly the line till these are fixed and that means there are a bunch of mechanics that really don't have alot of work to this week.

Hope I didn't ramble to much in that answer.

Glad to hear that the storm didn't hit your place. I know your used to those storms but it just seems alittle early in the year to have them. I lived in Tulsa while going to Tech school back in 81 thru 83

Steve