A United Airlines flight that took off from San Francisco International Airport Friday morning landed in Oregon with a missing external panel, according to officials.
United says the missing panel wasn’t discovered until the plane landed safely in Medford and that pilots had no idea during the flight that something had happened.
There are 4 tier levels for plane maintenance, and iirc, the plane manufacturer may involve in higher tier ones or repairs that have more serious issues. Otherwise, airlines usually do their own repairs. In this case, it’s a subsidiary of United called United Technical that does their repairs and maintenance.
Yeah makes sense my industry works in a similar fashion