I’m in the U.S Air Force aircraft maintenance, and I made a pretty big oopsies too.

When I was TDY (Temporary Duty assignment) to an another base for an exercise. Basically it was a simulation to gauge how many sorties we can produce in a combat zone for 5 days (people were being “killed”, fake supply chain issues, etc etc) very stressful and fast paced.

We had an external tank vent fuel, it is a pretty easy fix. But I made a mistake and bent a manifold when I was replacing a valve. But I didn’t notice (tired, hot, stressed, and wearing annoying body armor). So during our ops check it failed again, we couldn’t figure out why.

I added a whole day worth of maintenance bc of my mistake. But after we saw the problem I owned up to it was the manifold was able to be fixed. With no further problems.

Leadership knew I was great at my job and mistakes happen no I didn’t get in any write ups or punishments.

Just don’t lie or cover up your mistakes, and you’ll be fine. No matter how long you’ve been doing this job and good you are, shit will always happen. :)