3 ms·

> rudder SVO-730 rollout guidance servo that was disabled per UAL’s delivery requirements Not great that a disabled component seems to have caused this issue :

• londons_explore 3y ago
  Did they intend to fly an unused multi-kilogram piece of hardware around the world burning fuel unnecessarily with every flight?
  • eqvinox 3y ago
    That's my understanding, yes.
    • londons_explore 3y ago
      When you consider air freight is worth ~$10/kg for cross-ocean flights, the decision to not remove 10kg of unused servo is worth about $700,000 per plane across the ~20 year expected lifespan of the plane. And they probably do this on all their planes too, so perhaps multiply that by their ~200 plane fleet size giving a loss to the shareholders of $140,000,000. That ought to be hard to justify at the shareholder meeting.
      • eqvinox 3y ago
        If you read the context given in the report, it mentions that this is done to change the plane's ILS rating from Cat-IIIB to Cat-IIIA. While I have absolutely no clue what operational/financial reason there might be to do this, I would guess they want to reenable the servo at some later point. (The plane might also just not be certified to operate without that servo; as shown by this incident the servo still has some impact even when it's disabled.)