“Is it supposed to look like this?” the pre-solo learner asked, pointing to the right wingtip of the Cessna 172. The wingtip light was askew, hanging by a wire and a piece of what looked like duct tape. Someone or something had whacked that wing tip hard. There was some paint transfer and a scrape on the underside of the wing. This first-flight-of-the-morning discovery turned into a lesson on what to do when you find damage to the airplane.
The learner was very concerned that he would have to pay for the repair because he found the damage. That’s not how this works, I assured him, wondering out loud how many times the airplane had flown like that, and if another pilot had noticed the damage but not reported it for fear of being blamed and billed for it.
