Comments

ict-cfi suggests we should think of airplanes as cars and consider the miles they cover as a determinant of the age of retirement. How many properly maintained cars have been banned from US roads because they are too old or have too many miles? The whole concept of age and TBO was abandoned by the airlines and military years ago. http://www.avweb.com/news/savvyaviator/savvy_aviator_45_how_risky_is_going_past_tbo_195241-1.html A few years ago Richard Collins' last flight in his pampered C-210T was to the dismantler. It would be good to know more about what drove that decision. Oh Dick! http://www.airfactsjournal.com/about/ Corrosion: most engines die today because they rust out, not wear out. Is that true for airframes? I suspect Cessna's real concern is aircraft that fly a few hours and sit on the ramp in hail, rain,snow or salt fog. Cessna has bumbled thru an 'aging aircraft' presentation to get a few on board. Good for them. But the feds have made zero effort to present their case or get me on board with this AD. That is just arrogance and it pisses me off. The sad part is that a plane that has been routinely hangared, treated with CorrosionX and rarely mistreated could meet the same fate as a rust bucket that spent 30 years dancing on a tiedown in the wind, rain, hail and snow. Compliance with 'Emergency Service Bulletins - SBs - is voluntary for part 91 operators. Airworthiness directives - ADs - are mandatory for everyone affected. So perhaps the spar cap issue is an attempt to collect data from the field at owner expense, so I have mixed emotions about it. Data is good. creating a red herring based on no data is not. Elevating this spar cap SB to an AD without convincing the operators that there is data to support the need is flat wrong but not unheard of: Manufacturers can claim their data 'proprietary.' By doing so the feds can herd us off a cliff without explaining why, but it's still wrong. Lets look at the T34 mentor in- flight breakups for a clue how this could go and how it should go. The involved aircraft were all used for mock combat. But it threatened to affect thousands that were in no way involved because the T-34 shares many structures with the Beech Bonanza. Avweb's John Deakin wrote a superb article about it in 2005 called "Pelican's Perch #20: Ground all Bonanzas? http://www.avweb.com/news/pelican/182086-1.html. The salient point John makes is this: ""Why should you care about any of this? True, right now only the T-34s are at risk, but we all need to pay attention -- now! I believe that if events run their course in the current direction, it is very possible that most aircraft in "the Bonanza family" may be subject to another FAA-mandated fiasco that makes the V-Tail crisis of the '80s look tame by comparison. It is possible the entire fleet could be grounded while a "fix" is designed and approved, and that the fix could be so expensive that many Bonanza owners would simply have to junk their airplanes because the fix would be economically disastrous. Others would be burdened with costs in lost time, money, and useful load. At this point, it is all too easy for the alphabet groups and owner associations to sit back and say, "Well, the investigation isn't complete, and we don't even know what happened, yet, so let's wait and see." True, the investigation is not complete. The NTSB ain't talking, and the fat lady hasn't sung. But there are some frightening signs that lead me to believe the investigation is badly off track, and may never get back on. Many of the current participants have "mixed motives" at best, and the key players appear to be rushing ahead with a fix that isn't. "" The similarities between the wing spar cap AD and the T-34 AD are not accidental, and to say 'aw shucks, wouldn't you want to know if your plane has cracks' avoids the real issue, which is this: Now we have the government mandating we collect and submit data to them for further 'decision making.' Cessna should be doing that, not the feds. Cessna has a vested interest in seeing that the fleet survives. The feds clearly have no such concern. That the feds are making this mandatory without sharing data and getting owners/operators on board is simple arrogance. That's the real problem.