Reading an old FAA report on a 737 autopilot fault

I was looking through some old NTSB reports online and found one from a 2005 incident. The report said a faulty autopilot servo caused a series of uncommanded pitch changes. What got me was the root cause. It wasn't a bad chip or a broken wire. It was a tiny amount of moisture, less than a teaspoon, that had seeped into the housing over two years and finally caused a short. The plane had passed all its regular checks. It makes you think about how something so small can hide for so long. Has anyone else run into a problem where the cause was way simpler than you expected?

2 comments

2 Comments

jadeg818d ago

That "less than a teaspoon" detail is wild. It's like the plane's biggest enemy wasn't a storm or a mechanical failure, but a spilled drink from two years ago that nobody cleaned up.

the_jennifer8d ago

Imagine the tiny things we all ignore daily!