After annual check flight

brien23

brien23

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Brien
If after the annual the mechanic wants to do a check flight can he do it with a Private Pilots cert and by doing it does he have to pay his share of the cost of the flight.
 
brien23 said:
If after the annual the mechanic wants to do a check flight can he do it with a Private Pilots cert and by doing it does he have to pay his share of the cost of the flight.
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Some shops have test pilots. A small shop A&P may do his own check flights (an added service to you). The service should be included on your bill for the overall annual.
 
citizen5000 said:
Some shops have test pilots. A small shop A&P may do his own check flights (an added service to you). The service should be included on your bill for the overall annual.
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If the mechanic does it for compensation or hire that's a commercial Pilots cert required we are talking PPL.
 
I'm a little confused by the question. Are you asking about charging your mechanic to do a check flight in your plane he just worked on?

I've had mechanics do this and I think it's a good thing if they have the correct rating and insurance accepts him under your open pilot clause. I'm not sure how an A&P's insurance works and if that covers it or not.
 
In 20 years of ownership I have never had an IA request to do a test flight. Most of the time they do a run up, but I normally tell them I will do the run up and ask them join me. The IA's I deal with know me and trust me for my knowledge of my plane.
 
Radar Contact said:
I'm a little confused by the question. Are you asking about charging your mechanic to do a check flight in your plane he just worked on?

I've had mechanics do this and I think it's a good thing if they have the correct rating and insurance accepts him under your open pilot clause. I'm not sure how an A&P's insurance works and if that covers it or not.
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The question was a Mechanic with only a Private Pilot cert. wants to do a check flight in the aircraft by himself. He can't do it for compensation or hire as that would be a Commercial operation so he does it as a Private Pilot. Does he have to pay his share of the cost of the aircraft since he holds a PPL. and can't charge for acting as a pilot for hire or compensation.
 
Considering that depending on what was done when it was in the shop may require a test flight before returning the aircraft to service, I'd say yes. The FARs also state that the test flight needs to be conducted by someone holding at least a private rating.

But after annual? It shouldn't be required. Some owners might request it but I have only met one owner who has wanted that service. Most seem to be overprotective of their airplanes and don't want someone else touching it. Even if that other person is more qualified to make the test flight...
 
brien23 said:
The question was a Mechanic with only a Private Pilot cert. wants to do a check flight in the aircraft by himself. He can't do it for compensation or hire as that would be a Commercial operation so he does it as a Private Pilot. Does he have to pay his share of the cost of the aircraft since he holds a PPL. and can't charge for acting as a pilot for hire or compensation.
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Who says the private pilot/mechanic is going to log the flight? If no compensation is received, no harm done.
 
The A&P is charging you for the annual.
Also see: 14 CFR 91.407 requires an "Operational Check Flight" of an aircraft before passengers may be carried.

"until an appropriately rated pilot with at least a private pilot certificate flies the aircraft, makes an operational check of the maintenance performed or alteration made, and logs the flight in the aircraft records"
 
citizen5000 said:
The A&P is charging you for the annual.
Also see: 14 CFR 91.407 requires an "Operational Check Flight" of an aircraft before passengers may be carried.

"until an appropriately rated pilot with at least a private pilot certificate flies the aircraft, makes an operational check of the maintenance performed or alteration made, and logs the flight in the aircraft records"
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Best to read the entire text. There is no legal requirement, but it sure is a good idea. I recommend it.

§91.407 Operation after maintenance, preventive maintenance, rebuilding, or alteration.
(a) No person may operate any aircraft that has undergone maintenance, preventive maintenance, rebuilding, or alteration unless—

(1) It has been approved for return to service by a person authorized under §43.7 of this chapter; and

(2) The maintenance record entry required by §43.9 or §43.11, as applicable, of this chapter has been made.

(b) No person may carry any person (other than crewmembers) in an aircraft that has been maintained, rebuilt, or altered in a manner that may have appreciably changed its flight characteristics or substantially affected its operation in flight until an appropriately rated pilot with at least a private pilot certificate flies the aircraft, makes an operational check of the maintenance performed or alteration made, and logs the flight in the aircraft records.

(c) The aircraft does not have to be flown as required by paragraph (b) of this section if, prior to flight, ground tests, inspection, or both show conclusively that the maintenance, preventive maintenance, rebuilding, or alteration has not appreciably changed the flight characteristics or substantially affected the flight operation of the aircraft.
 
Dont see why not. No property or passengers are being carried for compensation or hire. Doesnt mean he can't be compensated for flying the airplane. I'd think the same would apply to ferrying. I think, maybe.
 
I'm no aviation lawyer, or anything other than just a simple PP-ASEL, but I'll throw my guess into the fray:

I say 61.113 para. (b)(1) and/or (2) applies here.

Discuss...
 
The two IAs I've used regularly would both go with me on the test flight if I wanted. I've never had one suggest going by themselves, I've flown the test flight solo more often than not. Both have flown my plane on a number of occasions, either to ferry it back from someplace where I left it with a mechanical issue, or that I just let them borrow it.

Of course, it was the first flight after annual that my engine blowed up (but it was 45 minutes in the that flight).
 
BillTIZ said:
He's being paid for mechanic duties, not Pilot duties.
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Annnnnd to further muddy the waters, a private pilot CAN be compensated if it's for the furtherance of a business IF the flight is incidental to the business, AND no pax are carried
 
Whoa. Let's back up and analyze the situation. Many owners hold the A&P/IA hostage after maintenance. BTDT.

As an A&P/IA an I responsible for the owner's actions during that flight. I don't think so, I am there to accompany him and let him know things are working as advertised, nothing more, nothing less. It it's doubtful that riding along as a mechanic the feds would hold me responsible for his errors. Ridden that ride both with pilots I trust and those I don't. Nuff said.
 
Funny, I just came back from a test flight. I see nothing at all wrong with it. Indeed, I'm impressed by a mechanic taking the risk for a test flight. Remember, if the mechanic screwed up it his six in a sling
 
steingar said:
Funny, I just came back from a test flight. I see nothing at all wrong with it. Indeed, I'm impressed by a mechanic taking the risk for a test flight. Remember, if the mechanic screwed up it his six in a sling
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I was thinking of a way to say that. I'm much happier if they want to come along. Means they believe in their work.

That said, one of our local TV news stations back when TV stations all had helicopters, dunked theirs in a frozen reservoir doing one of these flights and killed the mechanic, a passenger, and permanently disabled the pilot after being underwater for way too long and revived.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/209745/COPTER-PILOT-IS-REVIVED-AFTER-CRASH-IN-ICY-WATER.html

Was big news around here back when I was just starting flying. Sad. Peter was never right after that. He survived three years after the crash.


Post major maintenance flights... always higher risk... be careful y'all. Don't get complacent.

That was also that station's fifth helo crash. It was pretty much around that time that the networks decided individual stations owning helos was over with. The deals to lease one helo across multiple stations started and now the city is down to one leased aircraft.

I always wanted to do the fixed-wing traffic reports when I was a kid and into my teens. Back then there were two or three fixed wing, depending on the year, and a number of helos flying the skies every morning doing that job. By my twenties they were all being sold off.

Nowadays it's all done by one company using the State fiber optic system and remote cameras. Not interesting at all, anymore.

I'd listen on a scanner or whatever ham radio gear I had both to their direct downlinks (always on, second boom mic on their headsets) on wideband FM, and their ATC chatter. They had a special callsign with the TRACON, "Skywatch". I think at the peak, "Skywatch Seven" was the highest number they made it to. Running all over town early mornings and then again in the afternoons.

I even flew one of the 182s that was set up for one of the stations. They contracted to a local short-lived flight school to provide the aircraft, and it was on the rental line, you could rent it as long as you had it back on the ground an hour before the daily two windows of traffic watch time.

The wideband FM gear and special headset were kept between the seats in a custom made box and the headset was in the back seat pocket. I wanted to plug in and turn it on and say hi to the board engineer(s) at the station, but we were (of course) told to leave the stuff alone. ;-)
 
Everskyward said:
I had not thought of Peter Peelgrane in a long time.
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It's been a long time. How about Karen Key? December 7, 1982. I was just a little kid at the time of that one.

(Although that one may be not quite as tragic, alcohol abuse... VFR into IMC, 200-300 OVC and a BAC of 0.093. And departed for PUB from
BJC via Special VFR, even after another news helo crew had turned around and come back, and a second crew hadn't even bothered to pull their helo out of the hangar. She didn't have an instrument ticket. Lied about her flight hours... http://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/12...s-helicopter-pilot-one-of-four/8805000427801/ )

I think of Peter's crash every time someone mentions they need to go do a test flight after major maintenance on anything. Not deeply or for very long, but somehow his accident always stuck in my mind as a reminder to take post-maintenance flights just a little more seriously. Stuff goes wrong on post-maintenance flights a little more than others, statistically.

Not to say they didn't take it seriously that day. Nobody really knows. But they definitely ended up in a bad spot to have to autorotate that morning. If they'd have been only a few hundred yards east or west, they'd probably have all been alive today. Maybe even walked away and not seriously even injured.

Being right over the not-frozen-enough reservoir just wasn't a smart place to be on a test flight. :(

It just makes one think a little. Is this really the flight to be out here over inhospitable terrain on?

Obviously, the worst can happen anytime, but certain ops tempt fate a little harder than others.

Mike Silva still takes the "Holy crap" award in Denver helo flying and hasn't been topped yet... nearly landing on the hood of that pickup truck with the armed suspect hiding in it. I got to meet him a number of times when I used to chase storms.

He'd bring the helo out to get shots and land it out in fields near FTG and we'd all stand around and chat until the weather actually popped somewhere. He got his ham radio license and had a ham rig installed in the helo for weather season, and he'd look out for us ground spotters as much as we'd feed him info on where to find interesting weather... which of course he'd shoot footage of... a little bit "grey" in the whole non-pecuniary interest rules of ham radio, but he was keeping us all safe from his better vantage point than we had, so whatever.

Long ago and far away, it all seems like now. :). The pickup truck thing was 1988.


Mike flew for Channel 4 from 1983 after Key's death in 1982, until Channel 4 got rid of their helo in 2009. He volunteered that year to go to Iraq and fly Medevac. I haven't heard much of where he ended up after that. 25,000 safe flying hours in helos and inducted to the Heartland Emmy Hall of Fame by then. Wrote safety standards for helo pilots for the network.

http://emmyawards.tv/about/silver-circle-nomination-form/silver-circle-inductees/mike-silva/

The two personalities of Key and Silva couldn't be more different. One the very epitome of unsafe, the other as safety conscious and profesional as that crazy business would allow.

Mike was also involved in finding a fatal crash of a CAP 182 during a search for a missing hiker in 1988. That story is on page 7 of this Mountain Rescue Association document about accidents during searches. That was about three years before I even knew CAP existed. Mike also pulled out some out of state rescue personnel who were suffering the effects of altitude during the search, on that same mission.

http://mra.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/AMRO_10Oct2016.pdf

Honestly, I can't remember a single safety briefing that ever mentioned that fatal crash in all my time in CAP here. Odd almost.

Sorry, just a personal interest of mine... always thought the "electronic news gathering" (ENG) jobs in aviation were fascinating. The collision of the two news helos over PHX 25 years after Key was a shock. Still some out there who tried to push a little too hard.

Disconnecting the helos and their pilot's employment from the stations via leasing agreements with operators, while somewhat sad that the sky isn't full of familiar friendly voices and faces watching over the cities, as much as there once were, probably saved lives in a strange way, removing some of that "must get the story" pressure.
 
denverpilot said:
It's been a long time. How about Karen Key? December 7, 1982. I was just a little kid at the time of that one.

(Although that one may be not quite as tragic, alcohol abuse... VFR into IMC, 200-300 OVC and a BAC of 0.093. And departed for PUB from
BJC via Special VFR, even after another news helo crew had turned around and come back, and a second crew hadn't even bothered to pull their helo out of the hangar. She didn't have an instrument ticket. Lied about her flight hours... http://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/12...s-helicopter-pilot-one-of-four/8805000427801/ )

I think of Peter's crash every time someone mentions they need to go do a test flight after major maintenance on anything. Not deeply or for very long, but somehow his accident always stuck in my mind as a reminder to take post-maintenance flights just a little more seriously. Stuff goes wrong on post-maintenance flights a little more than others, statistically.

Not to say they didn't take it seriously that day. Nobody really knows. But they definitely ended up in a bad spot to have to autorotate that morning. If they'd have been only a few hundred yards east or west, they'd probably have all been alive today. Maybe even walked away and not seriously even injured.

Being right over the not-frozen-enough reservoir just wasn't a smart place to be on a test flight. :(

It just makes one think a little. Is this really the flight to be out here over inhospitable terrain on?

Obviously, the worst can happen anytime, but certain ops tempt fate a little harder than others.

Mike Silva still takes the "Holy crap" award in Denver helo flying and hasn't been topped yet... nearly landing on the hood of that pickup truck with the armed suspect hiding in it. I got to meet him a number of times when I used to chase storms.

He'd bring the helo out to get shots and land it out in fields near FTG and we'd all stand around and chat until the weather actually popped somewhere. He got his ham radio license and had a ham rig installed in the helo for weather season, and he'd look out for us ground spotters as much as we'd feed him info on where to find interesting weather... which of course he'd shoot footage of... a little bit "grey" in the whole non-pecuniary interest rules of ham radio, but he was keeping us all safe from his better vantage point than we had, so whatever.

Long ago and far away, it all seems like now. :). The pickup truck thing was 1988.


Mike flew for Channel 4 from 1983 after Key's death in 1982, until Channel 4 got rid of their helo in 2009. He volunteered that year to go to Iraq and fly Medevac. I haven't heard much of where he ended up after that. 25,000 safe flying hours in helos and inducted to the Heartland Emmy Hall of Fame by then. Wrote safety standards for helo pilots for the network.

http://emmyawards.tv/about/silver-circle-nomination-form/silver-circle-inductees/mike-silva/

The two personalities of Key and Silva couldn't be more different. One the very epitome of unsafe, the other as safety conscious and profesional as that crazy business would allow.

Mike was also involved in finding a fatal crash of a CAP 182 during a search for a missing hiker in 1988. That story is on page 7 of this Mountain Rescue Association document about accidents during searches. That was about three years before I even knew CAP existed. Mike also pulled out some out of state rescue personnel who were suffering the effects of altitude during the search, on that same mission.

http://mra.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/AMRO_10Oct2016.pdf

Honestly, I can't remember a single safety briefing that ever mentioned that fatal crash in all my time in CAP here. Odd almost.

Sorry, just a personal interest of mine... always thought the "electronic news gathering" (ENG) jobs in aviation were fascinating. The collision of the two news helos over PHX 25 years after Key was a shock. Still some out there who tried to push a little too hard.

Disconnecting the helos and their pilot's employment from the stations via leasing agreements with operators, while somewhat sad that the sky isn't full of familiar friendly voices and faces watching over the cities, as much as there once were, probably saved lives in a strange way, removing some of that "must get the story" pressure.
Click to expand...
I don't remember Karen Key, although I heard about that accident later. I was living in Missouri in 1982. I do remember the chase with Mike Silva. I lived in Arvada at the time and drove past that parking lot on Sheridan every day on the way to work. I also heard him speak about the incident some time later.
 
The return to service flight is one of the most dangerous flights you make.

Personally I won't let my mechanics fly the airplane themselves. If it was a 172 it'd be one thing, but for a larger twin in which they have little experience of time in type or recency, I think that's asking for trouble. Plus they aren't covered under the open pilot clause.
 
Do you want a free beer with you $15 burger, or a free burger with your $15 beer?
 
I was Post Maintenance Check Flight (PMCF) qualified, and Quality Control (QC) inspector qualified in the Navy for the E-2. Kind of ironic having the 2 quals tied together, but in thinking about it, made me very aware that something I missed in the maintenance inspections could very well kill me and the crew on the PMCF.
 
In my case, the A&P and the IA are both CFI's. The IA has just about every rating/endorsement in the book including ATP, and in fact, taught me how to fly. If he wants to take a test flight for some reason after maintenance, he can get right after it.
 
MauleSkinner said:
Shouldn't matter...if this is something that the FBO does, their insurance should cover it.
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True, although I personally don't want anyone flying a plane I'm responsible for that isn't covered under insurance. It just gives you some extra insurance when dealing with an expensive asset.

I'd be less concerned about it with something like a 172, though. Keep in mind I mostly deal with twins, and most people aren't as proficient at flying twins. Especially when talking about a return to service flight (which is one of the more dangerous flights you'll do), this is important.
 
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