Narrative:

My partner and I found a major hydraulic leak covering the entire bottom of the tail section on the belly. We went up through the tail access door to inspect the hydraulic components since that's where the fluid seem to be coming from. There was way too much fluid everywhere in there covering everything going up to the highest point; my partner said he thought he might know where its coming from which is a hydraulic line near the engine so he wanted to partially open the patio doors. The patio doors were documented in the logbook that they were opened to F.O.M. Only because we had another plane we needed to catch; so we documented exactly what we did at the time being due to worrying about catching the inboard aircraft and doing the check on it. We never turned on hydraulics or even moved flight controls the entire time. Once we realized it was too involved; we let our supervisor know that the out of service crew would need to come take over and work it; as we still had another plane to come in and catch. The out of service crew never met with us and vica versa to get/give a proper turnover as to what's been done. Later on in the morning our supervisor asked us if we had turned hydraulics on and moved the elevators which we said no; as we simply just went up to check the obvious first before moving forward.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: MD11 Technician reported the maintenance platform was left partially open causing the elevator tip to make contact with the patio door.

Narrative: My partner and I found a major hydraulic leak covering the entire bottom of the tail section on the belly. We went up through the tail access door to inspect the hydraulic components since that's where the fluid seem to be coming from. There was way too much fluid everywhere in there covering everything going up to the highest point; my partner said he thought he might know where its coming from which is a hydraulic line near the engine so he wanted to partially open the patio doors. The patio doors were documented in the logbook that they were opened to F.O.M. ONLY because we had another plane we needed to catch; so we documented exactly what we did at the time being due to worrying about catching the inboard aircraft and doing the check on it. We never turned on hydraulics or even moved flight controls the entire time. Once we realized it was too involved; we let our supervisor know that the out of service crew would need to come take over and work it; as we still had another plane to come in and catch. The out of service crew never met with us and vica versa to get/give a proper turnover as to what's been done. Later on in the morning our supervisor asked us if we had turned hydraulics on and moved the elevators which we said no; as we simply just went up to check the obvious first before moving forward.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.