Thorough preflight inspection of aircraft tires is crucial, and pilots should not hesitate to consult experienced mechanics for unusual findings, as aircraft tires differ significantly from automobile tires (e.g., no wear bars, specific inflation procedures).
Aircraft tire maintenance, including changing and proper inflation, is a complex procedure requiring specialized tools, specific techniques for inner tube installation, and often the guidance of an A&P mechanic, making "negative transference" from car experience dangerous.
Common flight school tire issues include flat spots caused by hard braking, necessitating diligent inspection (e.g., rolling the aircraft to check the full circumference) and never flying with visible chord damage.
Pilots should be proactive in checking tire pressure before the first flight of the day, using information from the POH, and can use methods like the "chalk trick" to verify that reported maintenance issues have been addressed by flight school crews.
This is not what a CFI wants to hear when the learner is doing the preflight inspection. The learner was looking at the nosewheel of the Cessna 150, specifically, at a scalloped pattern on the side of the tire. She’d never seen this before—and frankly, in my more than 30 years of flying, neither had I. But I knew ugly when I saw it.
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Meg Godlewski has been an aviation journalist for more than 24 years and a CFI for more than 20 years. If she is not flying or teaching aviation, she is writing about it. Meg is a founding member of the Pilot Proficiency Center at EAA AirVenture and excels at the application of simulation technology to flatten the learning curve. Follow Meg on Twitter @2Lewski.
