Deferring Airplane Maintenance

My grandmother loved an adage. "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today." "A stitch in time saves nine." "If you dont find time to do it now, when will you find time to do it later?" All fine words to live by, but my grandmother never paid for an aircrafts annual inspection. With the base price of a straight-leg single-engine airplane annual at some shops hovering around $1500-thats the price if nothing is actually wrong with the airplane-some of the adages heard around the shop are "It flew in, itll fly out." "You said it was fine that way last year: why is this year different?" and the most common, "I cant afford that-just sign it off now and well get it on the next annual." To fix or not. What will it cost now versus the price later? Does it affect airworthiness? What does the FAA say about it? Whats the worst that can happen?

Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

Aircraft owners often defer maintenance due to cost, but this typically leads to greater expenses and significant safety risks later, embodying the adage "pay me now or pay me more later."
FAA regulations (FAR 91.213) generally prohibit flying with inoperative equipment, offering complex exceptions like Minimum Equipment Lists (impractical for most GA) or paragraph (d) which includes challenging compliance requirements.
Effective maintenance decisions involve a crucial "dance" between owners and mechanics, where trust, experience, and sound judgment are essential for categorizing repairs and determining acceptable deferrals.
Mechanics are hesitant to officially document deferred items in logs due to liability, often using informal "watch lists," highlighting the personal risk involved in approving potentially unsafe aircraft.

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My grandmother loved an adage. “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.” “A stitch in time saves nine.” “If you dont find time to do it now, when will you find time to do it later?” All fine words to live by, but my grandmother never paid for an aircrafts annual inspection.

With the base price of a straight-leg single-engine airplane annual at some shops hovering around $1500-thats the price if nothing is actually wrong with the airplane-some of the adages heard around the shop are “It flew in, itll fly out.”