Rant: My buddy in maintenance said our job is basically 'airplane IT' and I can't stop thinking about it

We were grabbing coffee after a long shift and he was complaining about a software update on a Garmin G5000. He goes, 'You guys just plug in, run the magic, and hope the gremlins are gone, right? It's like IT but with more altitude.' It hit different because he's not totally wrong, but also, we don't get to just reboot at 30,000 feet. Anyone else get a weirdly accurate comparison from someone outside the shop?

2 comments

2 Comments

casey_harris9824d ago

My buddy who works on cars calls me a "mechanic for screens" and it stings a little. He watched me troubleshoot a weird ADS-B failure for three hours last week and said it looked like I was just arguing with a very expensive, angry computer. Which, okay, fair. At least when his laptop bluescreens, it's not also traveling at 250 knots.

anthony_sullivan724d ago

Ugh, that's such a dismissive way to put it. Troubleshooting a system like that under pressure is a real skill... it's not just clicking around. The stakes are way different when you're dealing with flight systems.