He pointed to specific line items. He showed Vanessa the discrepancies. He cross-referenced the part codes and showed her what the numbers actually meant. She didn't interrupt. She made marks on the paper.
She asked two questions, both of them precise and relevant. Derek said very little. When Caleb finished, the room was quiet for a moment. How many aircraft in our fleet could have similar issues? Vanessa asked.
I've only seen this one. But based on the pattern you're describing, based on the pattern I'm describing, this isn't a one aircraft problem. Maintenance culture is a culture. it spreads or it doesn't based on what the organization tolerates. If the standard on this aircraft was to initial and move on, that standard existed somewhere. It applies somewhere else.
Vanessa looked at the marked-up records in front of her. I have six aircraft in this fleet. She said, "My board has been pushing for a maintenance cost reduction for 18 months. We brought in a new maintenance contractor 14 months ago." Caleb did not say anything to that. I approved that decision, she said.
I approved it because the numbers worked and the certifications were current and no one gave me a reason not to. She looked at him. Is that a reason to be in the air? It's the reason most aircraft are in the air, Caleb said. That's not a comfort.
She was quiet again. Her pen moved across the corner of one of the pages, not writing, just moving. The physical equivalent of thinking out loud. I need you to look at the other five aircraft, she said. That's a significant amount of work.
I know what it is. It'll take days, a week, maybe more, depending on what I find. Tell me your rate. My real rate, Caleb said. Not $100.
She looked at him steadily. Your real rate? He told her. She didn't blink. Done.
I'll need full records access. Every aircraft, every maintenance log going back to when you brought in the new contractor, have it. And if I find something that requires grounding an aircraft, it gets grounded. Care what the schedule says? Agreed.
Caleb looked at her across the table. Understand? That means this might gets expensive in ways that have nothing to do with my rate. Mr. Hart, she capped her pen. I just spent 2 hours learning that I have been flying six aircraft that may or may not be airworthy and that the system I trusted to tell me if otherwise was not doing its job.
Expensive is a relative concept right now. He nodded once. Derek looked like a man watching a wall fall toward him in very slow motion, fully aware that there was nowhere to step. That wasn't going to hurt. Caleb gathered the maintenance records into a rough stack and looked at Vanessa.
I need to make a call before we start. My daughter's school gets out at 3:15. I need to arrange pickup. Vanessa looked at him at this man who had just agreed to audit her entire fleet and whose immediate logistical concern was a third grader's school pickup. "Of course," she said.
He stepped away from the table and called Mrs. Delgado, who agreed to cover without complaint and with the specific unceremonious competence of someone who had done this before. He thanked her, hung up, and came back to the table. The work ahead was going to be long and probable uncomfortable uncomfortable and would almost certainly produce information that nobody on the sterling aviation side of that table was going to enjoy receiving. But the engines were shut down. The aircraft was grounded and somewhere on a thermal sleeve that had been cracked for an unknowable number of flights.
The yet to evidence that happens when accountability got stretched past its serviceable limits was sitting in an access bay waiting to be properly documented. That Caleb thought was where you started. You started with what was actually there, not with what the paperwork said was there. You started with the physical truth of the thing and you worked outward from that and you did not come to stop until you had an honest picture of what you were dealing with. He pulled the first maintenance log toward him and opened it.
The second aircraft was a Bombardier Global 6000, tail number N442 C6 SSS, and it told Caleb everything he needed to know about the maintenance contractor within the first 40 minutes of physical inspection. He had started the fleet review the following morning. Vanessa had arranged for him to have unrestricted access to all six hangars across a Meridian Executive Airfield with a Sterling Aviation ground crew assigned to open access panels, retrieve records, and stay out of his way. Last part was his specific request, and Derek had communicated it with the kind of tone that suggested he'd found it personally insulting, which Caleb had not spent any energy worrying about. The Global 6000 had a hydraulic line routing issue in the nose gear bay.
A failure, not yet, but the line had been rerouted at some point, probably during a previous repair, and the new routing put it in contact with a structural rib under certain gear extension loads. The contact point had developed had developed the beginning of wear 100 cycles, maybe 200, and the line would develop a fatigue crack. You would get hydraulic fluid in the nose gear bay. Would get a gear that might not extend correctly. You would get a situation that was manageable if you knew about it and catastrophic if you didn't.