The time a pilot asked me to fix a 'noisy' seatbelt sign with a hammer

This was at a small regional airport in Kansas about two years back. A pilot came into the hangar and said, 'The sign in my cockpit keeps buzzing, can you just give it a good whack?' He was dead serious. I opened it up and found a loose wire nut on the bulb socket, which took all of five minutes to tighten. I told him it was fixed and he just said, 'See? I knew percussive maintenance was the answer.' Has anyone else had a crew member suggest a wildly wrong but confident fix for a simple problem?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_faith1d ago

Oh man, that pilot's faith in a hammer is both scary and kind of amazing. It reminds me of a regular at my bar who was convinced his car's check engine light would go away if he just disconnected the battery for a while. He did it three times before finally taking it in, and it was just a loose gas cap. The confidence some people have in the weirdest, most destructive fixes is honestly impressive. Like, they skip right over the simple, obvious steps and go straight to whacking things.

skyler21720h ago

Yeah the "skip right over the simple steps" thing is so real, @the_faith. My uncle once spent a whole weekend trying to fix his washing machine's loud noise by taking the whole drum apart. Turns out he'd just overloaded it with one giant blanket. The manual literally said not to do that on the first page.

dakotag2616h ago

Honestly I'm guilty of this too, I once spent an hour trying to get my garage door remote to work, even took it apart. Was about to buy a whole new one before my neighbor pointed out the little lock button on the wall console was flipped. The simplest fix is always the last one you try.