RWNJ wrote:
Worse than jumping from a plane, imho, is flying in a helicopter. The blades are held on by a single nut. They jokingly call it the Jesus nut. If it fails, you have just about enough time to say "Oh sweet Jesus! SAVE ME!" Before you hit the ground.
That reminds me of an incident I heard about during the '70s on one of our carriers, where they cashiered a helicopter mechanic because when he was doing repairs/maintenance on rotor hubs, he wasn't using all the bolts that they had come with when reassembling them. He apparently kept a hoard of these bolts in a drawer in his desk. They had to ground all the choppers this guy had been anywhere near while mechanics who hadn't gone off the deep end rebuilt their hubs with ALL the intended parts. OTOH, none of the hubs had actually failed from the the bolts' absence.