The pin came out of the shackle that holds the standing rigging to the mast. A twist with a pair of pliers would have prevented it.
Safety wire on anything that isn't assembled/disassembled during setup/takedown.
You would be amazed at some of the idiots we have to deal with when it comes to cancelling a flight.
I sat through an eight hour delay a couple of weeks ago in Honolulu. What started out as a mechanical in one of the engines mushroomed into a multibox avionics failure.
One woman was ranting about "I fly every week and this is total BS." she was fun to watch. Another was when the drunks came back from the bar and started asking funny questions of a senior gate agent that thought they were serious.
I felt sorry for the guy who had come to Hawaii for a quick vacation with his wife and had to be back on the East Coast for deployment to Iraq. Hopefully he made it and wasn't declared AWOL.
In the end we got a cardboard airport restaurant meal and a $200 voucher.
