Just learned that a single loose screw on a pitot tube can throw off airspeed by 12 knots on a 737

I was reading through an old NTSB report from 2019 (site was down due to weather, had some time to kill in the truck) and found this case where a missing screw on the pitot static port caused a 12 knot error at cruise. Never would have thought something that small could mess with the numbers that much. Now I'm triple checking every screw on every probe I touch. Has anyone else run into a similar surprise from a tiny defect like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

margaret_jackson731mo ago

Saw a YouTube video where a guy found a bug in a sensor caused a 20 knot error.

parker_park81mo ago

Wait, are you sure that sensor was the real problem?

henry60418d ago

Saw that video too, pretty wild. Honestly stuff like this is everywhere if you look close enough. My buddy had a similar thing with his car a few months back - check engine light was on for weeks, ended up being a loose gas cap not even a sensor issue. Its like how sometimes we chase the wrong problem because the obvious fix seems too simple. People blame the router when their wifi drops but half the time its just the modem needing a hard reset or too many devices connected. We overcomplicate things when a basic check would save hours of frustration.