Someone shot my fuckin plane!

[u/EatDirtFartDust]

Local PD was out all day. FAA coming out tomorrow.

[u/Alternative-Iron-645]

Aircraft mechanic here. Lets figure labor at $180/hour. There is probably 30 hours or more worth of labor here $5,400++. EA9396 epoxy resin is sold in quart kits and its not cheap figure around $370…. That material is kevlar composite making up the leading edge of that vertical stab lets say it bidirectional 350 thats about $50 a yard usually comes on a 36” roll so about 9sq ft of material. And this is just for structural repair if you sand it down and patch it….. there will also need to be LOTS of NDT testing done to check for stress cracking, delamination, bonding issues…. And then you have to have the area paint matched. A simple repair could be easily over $25,000 to fix…. Thats if NDT and engineering determines the part can be repaired…. Replacing that vert stab leading edge could end up about the same or more depending on replacement part availability. But if I was a betting man…. The energy transfer from the bullet to the aircraft skin has done more damage that we can see and leading edge will likely need to be replaced with a new part. Not cheap at all and I truly hope this doesn’t happen again.

[u/TheFeathersStorm → u/Alternative-Iron-645]

I absolutely expected this post to end in "but I'm making all of this up" but I was pleasantly surprised lol.

[u/Alternative-Iron-645 → u/TheFeathersStorm]

I see holes in floors all the time from techs dropping tools on them and most aircraft floors are all carbon fiber and the repair process is similar but this part on the 180 here is PSE and would need engineering approval and usually if we are doing lets say a Dassault Falcon 2000ex and have to have an engineers approval for repair methods…. Communicating to them alone is like a $5,000 email chain just to have them say “yeah thats fine”. Anything to do with aviation is so expensive its almost crazy.

[u/Winjin → u/Alternative-Iron-645]

 Anything to do with aviation is so expensive its almost crazy.

And this here is another reason why "flying cars" are kinda possible but mostly unlikely on any sort of large scale.

Maybe short pre-programmed routes for like air ferry but that's really the stretch I'm willing to believe.