Overheard a supervisor say avionics troubleshooting is '90% button pushing' and I had to bite my tongue

I was grabbing coffee last Wednesday and heard this lead tech from another hangar tell a new guy that our job is mostly just pressing test buttons and swapping boxes until something works. That really got under my skin because I've spent the last 6 months chasing an intermittent fault on a G5000 system where the logs pointed nowhere and I had to trace every wire back to the connector pins on the LRU. On one hand I get it, sometimes you do just cycle a circuit breaker and the problem goes away, but on the other hand the real skill is knowing which button to push and why based on system knowledge. Maybe I'm being too sensitive but it felt like he was selling the whole trade short to a rookie who needs to understand the depth of this work. How do you guys handle people who act like avionics is just plug and play? Am I wrong for getting worked up over a comment like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

sanchez.mia18d ago

And the worst part is he's probably the same guy who calls me for help every time a box actually has to come apart.

julia28618d ago

Had a guy once who bragged about never reading instructions, then called me to set up his printer.