[foldr]

If the 6 million parts figure is correct, it's obvious that it is not possible to inspect every part of a 747. Suppose we allow 1 minute per part inspection. Then that's still about 11 years of inspection time (without taking any breaks!)

[dozzie]

> that's still about 11 years of inspection time

11 person-years. You don't need the same person to conduct all the inspection.

[foldr]

Sure, but you'd need thousands of people to get it down to anything reasonable, even with the highly optimistic 1 minute per part inspection estimate.

I'm open to being corrected on this, but no-one has yet posted any evidence that there is any extant procedure for inspecting every part of a 747.