Showerthought: the old timer at our Tulsa hangar said 'check the logbook before you check the panel' and it stuck with me

Shane Butler · 2026-09-21T17:50:03.380033+00:00

I was a green A&P about 2 years in, working a 737 that kept throwing a fuel gauge fault every 3 or 4 flights. I spent almost a week chasing wiring, swapping connectors in the tail, pulling my hair out in the Oklahoma heat. Then this guy named Ray, had been on the line 31 years, walked up and asked if I read the logbook back past the latest entry. I had only looked at the last page. Turns out the same fault got written up 14 months earlier and the fix was a chafed wire bundle behind the left wing root that nobody documented the correction on. He said 'the plane has already told you what's wrong, you just have to read what it said last time.' That one line changed how I start every squawk now. Anybody else have an old timer drop a sentence on you that you still use on the floor?

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Showerthought: the old timer at our Tulsa hangar said 'check the logbook before you check the panel' and it stuck with me | Aircraft Mechanics - Pinecone Attack