Whenever an aeroplane arrives on stand, or is about to depart, we do walkaround checks. The primary reason for that is of course safety, to ensure there is nothing very obviously amiss on the aeroplane. But the other reason is to make sure we don't get blamed for damaging stuff which we did not damage: If there is any damage on an arriving aircraft, we want it noted that it was already damaged before we drive equipment up to the aeroplane, lest someone then claim that we caused that damage by hitting the plane when the damage was already there. Any damage, such as a dent or scrape which has been previously noted, and is not presenting a danger, usually has two things: a mention in the log book for the aeroplane, and a little sticker, often with an ID number next to the damage to indicate it has been logged. Most aeroplanes which are a few years old have plenty of these marks on them, but you'd be hard pressed to spot them from a distance.

So this morning we had an Icelandair Boeing 757 come in and it had some damage under the front cargo door, which looked like someone had perhaps driven a baggage belt ramp under the fuselage and creased the skin on the belly. So we held off putting our own vehicles onto the front of the aeroplane until the crew had come down and observed it and we of course photographed it so we had a record of the damage. Since photos you take on your phone get a geo-location and time stamp as part of the photo's metadata, his is why I use my phone for taking pics like that.

Anyway, this was quite a significant dent and there did not appear to be a log sticker next to it either, so I thought I'd show you the picture of it. As it turns out, the crew took a picture of it too but the aeroplane did depart, so it was presumably not an issue:

Once that had been logged, we were able to put a belt on the front and offload it. Here's a pic I took from the location of standing on the belt just outside the cargo door. As you can see, the Boeing 757's cargo doors are pretty high off the ground. There is a belt similar to the one I'm standing on, up at the rear hold of the aircraft and you can just make out the fuel pump truck under the wing. This is on Stand 23 at Manchester.

Edited March 3, 20206 yr by Chock

It's amazing how many dents and dings there are when you get to see airliners up close.

They should change the placard to " FWD Do not paint or ding" 🙂

Very common damage in that area of the 757.  Also the aircraft logbook usually has a dent/scratch log within it so it very well could have been previously actioned.  Dent log stickers dont always stay on.

I asked today and apparently it was in the log. We suspect that what has happened, is somebody has driven a belt up to the aircraft and raised the conveyor belt up so that someone could stand on it and undo the cargo door latches, and when the belt driver has raised the conveyor belt up, the guard rails have pressed up against the underside of the aeroplane and caused the damage. That's why we use engineer steps to be able to reach that latch and then move it out to the side to operate the cargo door controls, which is tedious compared to doing it with a belt, but short of accidentally smacking the engineer's steps, it is the safer way.

 

1 hour ago, Chock said:

I asked today and apparently it was in the log. We suspect that what has happened, is somebody has driven a belt up to the aircraft and raised the conveyor belt up so that someone could stand on it and undo the cargo door latches, and when the belt driver has raised the conveyor belt up, the guard rails have pressed up against the underside of the aeroplane and caused the damage. That's why we use engineer steps to be able to reach that latch and then move it out to the side to operate the cargo door controls, which is tedious compared to doing it with a belt, but short of accidentally smacking the engineer's steps, it is the safer way.

 

Our belt loaders had a platform in front of the driver's seat that you could stand on to access the panel to open the door. You still had to back the belt up to position it to load and unload, but at least it was safer.