Annuals ... More Harm Than Good?

bluerooster said:
where does it say that he cannot delegate certian tasks to someone else? Tasks such as removing plates and covers, cleaning, etc.
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...and delegate all the maintenance and repairs....too. ;)

My typical entries look something like this.....
Supervised Johny Screw Bender in the following repairs - Replaced: front windscreen PN 13432-02, compass with serviceable unit PN 550-805, fuel hose PN 17766-66, oil pressure hose 303-04, right front lift strut PN U85560-002, mixture control cable PN U16775-000, and gascolator SA3-00. Serviced and bled brakes. Cleaned and lubed pulleys & tie rods

C/W AD 2015-08-04 Wing Lift Struts by inspection per para h(1) & h(2) (due next annual insp),
C/W AD 76-07-12 R1 Bendix Switch by checking ops of mags (due next 100 hrs),
C/W AD 60-10-08 Fuel Selector screen by inspection (due next 100 hrs),
C/W AD 68-05-01 Muffler Inspection by inspection per para (e) (due next 100 hrs)

Checked engine controls for full travel operation. Inspected ELT in accordance with 14 CFR 91.207(d) by inspection and functional check. Returned to service. I certify that this aircraft has been inspected in accordance with an annual inspection as per 14 CFR 43 Appendix D and was determined to be in an airworthy condition.
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brien23 said:
We have a IA around that does the same thing for 20 minutes and $300. Annual sign off, does about 6 or 7 in a day, good money for little work sounds good. Of all the things in aviation that will kill you 20 minute Annual inspection would be at the bottom of the list.
The FAA wrote the Annual inspection requirements a long time ago Rag bag aircraft with cotton fabric, now most aircraft last forever with little or no upkeep. Do we still need the Annual inspections probably not, but it's a good money maker for a 20 minute Annual.
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I think you mis interpreted my post. it takes about 20 min. for the inspection after the undressing, and cleaning of the aircraft, draining of oil, cutting oil filter, etc. Then comes the fun part, the repair of any discrepencies found during that 20 min. inspection. Just because you airplane has undergone an annual inspection does not mean it's good to go. Also, being already familiar with my airplane and having the records on hand, knowing he's done the past 5 annual inspections, he doesn't have to look up every AD, just look for new ones that may have cropped up since last year. (I usually do that so he doesn't have to)

Do not confuse the IA spending 20 min, to inspect a Cherokee 140 that has been opened up and cleaned, with a pencil whip. I do all the work, he inspects, notes discrepencies, I do all the work, he inspects the work done, and if up to par signs off. As a general rule, there are very few (if any) discrepencies found. As I inspect myself as I'm taking it apart, and address what I find, as I go. So there ya go. Owner assisted annual.
 
bnt83 said:
I like annuals, not necessarily the repetitive crap but fixing stuff that is broke and replacing stuff that hasn't broke yet.
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why wait 'till annual inspection time to do that? That's where those $2k annuals for simple puddle jumpers comes from. I fix stuff when it needs fixed, not at annual. That's why my annuals run about $200, instead of $2000+. (unless I get a severe case of the "might as wells")
 
bluerooster said:
where does it say that he cannot delegate certian tasks to someone else? Tasks such as removing plates and covers, cleaning, etc.
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No where has the FAA allowed anyone to do any of the ANNUAL tasked.
for example,,,, any one can remove, clean, wheel bearings, But it requires a A&P-IA to inspect the bearings.
Remember- Cleaning is not inspection, when you remove some thing, the IA must inspect it to complete the annual.
This action can not delegated.
 
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Clip4 said:
The requirement for an annual inspection is a good regulation.
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I think anyone can maintain any aircraft, It is a matter who can declare it aircraft worthy.
I believe all aircraft must be inspected each year, and part 39 must continued
 
Clip4 said:
The requirement for an annual inspection is a good regulation.
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Technically it’s a mediocre regulation, but inertia and lack of development of numbers based criteria until a particular part starts failing, is the “that’s how we’ve always done it” SOP.

Most older aircraft are slathered with time based ADs over the top of the mediocrity of a calendar based inspection these days.

In real world ownership, I would say we are about seven to one catching airworthiness issues when using the aircraft ourselves or simply replacing worn things during normal ops, than inspections have found. Probably higher.

Inspections didn’t catch bladder tanks prior to failure, battery failures, a plug wire about to lose a connector, anything related to pending avionics failures, the about you fail nose gear strut seal... the list goes on. Even the worn tires when we intended to have them swapped during the shop visit, wasn’t a surprise.

About all any inspection has caught in a decade plus was a leak in a throttle cable, found when they washed the engine compartment and it instantly rusted so it wouldn’t move properly, and the stripped inspection screw holders that we had to tell the mechanic were falling out on the flight back home. He didn’t even catch those, we did. Got tired of seeing them go missing right after he would charge us to replace them. LOL. So many inspections they wouldn’t stay in anymore.

He caught one cylinder a tad low on compression recently but said the same thing everybody else does, that the Continental test with the orifice and such may have been a bit inaccurate and go fly the crap out of it and it’ll be fine ... or not. Again no surprise with a year of lower hours and an old engine. And no bad engine behavior seen, not even the dreaded “morning sickness”, etc.

Cancelled way more flights myself in all sorts of broken airplanes than mechanics have grounded.

Doesn’t mean I don’t value their time and extra eyeballs for hidden things, but true total value of the inspections has been way lower than good pre-flights.

Seven to one is low. I’d go as high as ten to one that I’ve told the mechanic the airplane is broken vs him telling me. Easily. My airplane or rentals.
 
denverpilot said:
Most older aircraft are slathered with time based ADs over the top of the mediocrity of a calendar based inspection these days.
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Yup. 20 or 30 years of entries showing that the Bendix ignition switch AD test had been done. I get under the panel and find, about half the time, that the switch is a later model Bendix that has the date code and so the AD no longer applies, or, more commonly, that it's an ACS switch that has its own entirely different AD and that its so far out of compliance it's not funny.

Or the Cessna seat rail AD that has obviously not been done properly at all. Latch pin doesn't go into the rail far enough as per AD, rollers seized, washers shot, stuff that would have been obvious if the seat was actually removed as per AD.

Or the ADs that were never caught even after 40 years. United Instruments altimeters. Some seat belts and shoulder harnesses. Cessna oil filter adapters. Some Bendix mags. Lots of stuff. Most of these are appliance ADs that don't usually show up in the AD search engines. One has to start digging and learn what is most likely to be applicable in the types he works on.
 
Dan Thomas said:
Most of these are appliance ADs that don't usually show up in the AD search engines. One has to start digging and learn what is most likely to be applicable in the types he works on.
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That is the reason I have an Excel spread sheet that shows current fitted equipment. It shows make, part number, serial number. Makes the AD search a lot easier.
 
Dan Thomas said:
Yup. 20 or 30 years of entries showing that the Bendix ignition switch AD test had been done. I get under the panel and find, about half the time, that the switch is a later model Bendix that has the date code and so the AD no longer applies, or, more commonly, that it's an ACS switch that has its own entirely different AD and that its so far out of compliance it's not funny.

Or the Cessna seat rail AD that has obviously not been done properly at all. Latch pin doesn't go into the rail far enough as per AD, rollers seized, washers shot, stuff that would have been obvious if the seat was actually removed as per AD.

Or the ADs that were never caught even after 40 years. United Instruments altimeters. Some seat belts and shoulder harnesses. Cessna oil filter adapters. Some Bendix mags. Lots of stuff. Most of these are appliance ADs that don't usually show up in the AD search engines. One has to start digging and learn what is most likely to be applicable in the types he works on.
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Yup those are sneaky. Some owners don’t keep up on them.

Our seat rail is “close” but not out of spec yet.

It’ll be nice to be done with paying to inspect it when it’s finally there and get it replaced with the McFarlane one.

We even got the “free” silly safety belt thing from Cessna done under that seat. It is supposed to give some peace of mind but it’s mostly useless, IMHO.

Just another thing to adjust and mess with once in a while. Well once so far, anyway, just to get it to disengage properly when you pull the handle.

I hear ya on individual items though. Learned about that from the late John Frank at his systems class, although I probably knew before that — but didn’t pay much attention to it when I was flying perennially clapped our rentals. :)

Once you own it, there’s a sense of more skin in the game of knowing every little detail. Flying any of ten rental Skyhawks, you end up (maybe inappropriately, since it’s on the PIC to know) having to trust the club and what the rental book says.

And then there’s the clubs who have multiple rentals but only allow a couple of them to be used for checkrides... nothing hinky there... LOL. Yeah I knew of one that did that around here... only those two had maintenance logs that were “known” to satisfy the local DPEs, or so I heard... :)

Ugh. Rental fleet. Cheap owners losing money on leasebacks.

I will say, at one club it was good to know which three airplanes were owned by a good mechanic who was leasing back. They weren’t pretty but everything worked and the logs were right and...
 
Just a thought here to extend out OP's automotive analogy...

I do all my own car maintenance which includes oil changes. When I change my car's oil I also look around under the hood, check all the fluids, the air filter, tires, etc. Maybe take a peek at what I can see underneath. On the older cars that have grease able fittings, grease them. What's the airplane equivalent?

Most GA planes get oil changes at 25 or 50hr intervals so what if we started doing 50hr checks? Having an A&P take an hour or two to look over anything that can be checked without a lot of disassembly, lube anything that needs it, etc? Less than an annual or 100hr inspection but still something that would hopefully catch the big stuff. Then extend the full blown annuals out to 2-years or(maybe) 200hrs?
 
cowman said:
so what if we started doing 50hr checks?
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FWIW: you can technically do that now and forego a "full blown" annual with a progressive inspection. You still need to complete the inspection cycle within 12 months and use an IA. However, the IA has the option of supervising a progressive vs having to perform an annual. A progressive was mainly intended for high flight hour aircraft, but nothing prevents the FSDO from approving one on a low flight time aircraft.
 
Checkout_my_Six said:
let's talk about that....can you site an example? Anything first hand?....or just roomers? ;)
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https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1123&context=jate
From Page 20:
The third most prevalent category was Inadequate Inspection (inclusive of annual, 100 hour, and non-scheduled) accounting for 54 accidents, 3 of which were fatal.

I had an engine failure when the crankshaft broke. It was due to a propstrike in the distant past when some mechanics just "dialled" the prop flange and called it good, instead of opening the engine up for NDT. I think some mechanics still do that. I bought an airplane that I had been flying as a glider tug, and found a crack in the right rear spar. The logs showed that about 20 years previous the airplane had been blown over on its back, and in such cases the dihedral puts a lot of load on the wingtips and will do that. The crack, from the top down at an angle thru the strut attach, would have been closed during flight. Just a matter of time and loading before it failed. I know of another airplane that had been on its back a few years before and I asked the owner about checking for cracks and he said it was OK. It crashed a couple of years later when one wing failed in a pull-up after a buzz job. New owner killed. TSB found an old crack in the rear spar. Same as I found. In the airplane I bought I also found five of the eight drag/anti-drag wires in the right wing broken or pulled out of their brackets. Only the fabric was holding the wing square. A windstorm a few years before I was flying it had pulled it loose from the tiedowns and rolled it into a hangar wall, damaging the wingtip on that wing and likely breaking the wires at that time. Somebody patched the wingtip. Apparently nobody looked inside the wing. While flying that airplane as a tug, the engine quit when the carb came loose. No safetying. Inspections are supposed to look for other mechanics' mistakes, too. Another airplane I ferried, a 172, was horrifically badly maintained as we found when we took it apart. Lower strut bolts missing their nuts. Forward stabilizer spar broken clean through. Some 130 snags on that airplane. It was hauled away on a trailer; we wanted nothing more to do with it. And it had just had an "annual" when I ferried it.

Stuff like that made me a fussy inspector.
 
So how will an annual prevent those from happening? Each of those aircraft you mentioned had multiple annuals that failed to catch the problem. Should we be required to use a different IA every 3-5 years?

The issue appears to be half-assed inspections. More half-assed inspections won't fix things. How do we ensure whole-ass inspections? How do I as an owner ensure my IA is looking close enough?
 
Dan Thomas said:
Stuff like that made me a fussy inspector.
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Me too. The FIRST time I look at an airplane for a private owner. I don't do clubs. I don't do FBOs. Private owners. But the guy puts 50 hours on it in a year. I know him. My kids play Little League with his. He is a fussy old maid about the airplane. Why in the hell should I wear out the same old PK screws looking at the same old aluminum with the same old flashlight 12 months later for no reason except the inspection requirements were written for the lowest bidder? That's the point I was trying to make to start this thread. I know I could make my own inspection criteria. But I also like to keep to the letter and spirit of the regulation.

Some many years ago i was in a lab doing NASA space stuff. All of our equipment needed to be torn apart, inspected, and calibrated on very specific intervals. And there was a failure rate on the equipment. When we finished the NASA contract we went back to on-condition repairs and calibrations on ten times the NASA requirements. Guess what? The failure rate went to nearly zero.

Somehow (other than a wink and a nod) we have to write the regulation(s) so that we aren't in the business of remanufacturing the airplane every 12 calendar months. I'm not saying I have the expertise to do that rewrite, but certainly amongst the IA brethren and sistren of this community we could come up with something better.

Jim
 
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The main driver for good maintenance and a safe airplane is the aircraft owner. Aviation is not an endeavor for the overly frugal yet there are those who will circumvent rules and opt for a paper annual. Conversely, the majority of a/c owners are conscientious folks and they inspect and repair throughout the year. Our neighbors to the north lightened their rules with owner declared maintenance. https://vb.taylorcraft.org/filedata/fetch?id=148711
Another solution is to move the annual to biennial as long as the aircraft has operated from 35 to 200 hours during the first year and an inspection checklist performed at each maintenance cycle.
 
Flybuddy said:
The main driver for good maintenance and a safe airplane is the aircraft owner.
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I also, in my checkered career, worked for a major airline. We had what we called A, B, C, and D inspections. They were based on hours, not days. A checks were a once-over lightly. B checks, more so, C checks serious, and D checks REAL serious. It did NOT matter how many days the aircraft flew or did not fly. An aircraft does NOT develop spar cracks sitting in a tiedown or a hangar. And for those of you who say a Bellanca wood wing WILL develop a spar crack sitting outside getting wet, then YOUR A check is different from MY Cessna A check. There has to be some sort of reasoned approach other than a "one size fits all".

Jim
 
Schokie said:
How do I as an owner ensure my IA is looking close enough?
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Ask them. Ask to see their required check list. Ask them how they perform individual tasks on their check list. Educate yourself on the requirements of an annual so as to provide yourself a foundation on what transpires during an annual. I've always been a fan of requiring a pilot or owner to learn the basics of what it takes for an aircraft to remain airworthy so that they can make those determinations you ask about. After all your the one who is held responsible for the aircraft's airworthiness.
Schokie said:
How do we ensure whole-ass inspections?
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By not keeping those who perform "half-assed" inspections in business. Unfortunately, a number of owners select their maintenance provider based on cost vs performance. Just look at some of the comments in this thread and others on PoA.
 
Bell, I hope you don't include me in your "half-assed" number, but I do $200 annuals. I expect the owner to do the grunt work. Pull all the inspection plates. Take all the seats out of the airplane. Open all the floorboards. Pull the engine cowling. Change the oil if it is time. Pull the screen or cut the filter, as appropriate. Check each pulley to be sure it rotates. And a lot of other airframe stuff on my written inspection document.

I'll do the engine leakdown, timing, and all the rest of the motor stuff myself. And look over ("inspect") all the rest of the stuff that the owner did.

Comments?

Jim
 
weirdjim said:
I hope you don't include me in your "half-assed" number,
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Not at all. Now if you charged $200 for a wax-job annual, i.e., half-assed, that would be different. But I don't take you for that type. I spent a few years doing nothing but owner-assisted mx so can relate to earning $200 on a $2000 job.;)
 
Schokie said:
How do we ensure whole-ass inspections? How do I as an owner ensure my IA is looking close enough?
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Don't take it to a shop that does cheap annuals unless there's a good reason they're inexpensive, such as owner-assisted. Don't tell the shop that the annual can't cost more than $XX. A lot of this stuff is driven by owners that can't really afford the airplane, and the defects start to pile up over the years they own it. Some the mechanic finds but they get deferred because the repair is expensive. Some the mechanic doesn't find because the customer wouldn't or couldn't pay for the time to open things up enough to find them. As far as owner-assisted annuals, some shops or their insurance companies won't let the owner in to take stuff apart and open up the inspection panels, and a lot of owners are elsewhere at work during the shop's working hours anyway. And some owners are simply not interested in mechanical stuff or in getting a bit dirty.

And this is why the "first" annual a new owner gets often tends to be expensive. A thorough prebuy as part of a thorough annual can catch a lot of the grief before the sale, and the sale price sometimes has to come down a lot.

I was always suspicious of any annual that never found any defects.
 
Why do people have trouble telling the different between the inspection and the repairs ?
I charge for the inspection, and I do not care who repairs the discrepancies.
 
Tom-D said:
Why do people have trouble telling the different between the inspection and the repairs ?
I charge for the inspection, and I do not care who repairs the discrepancies.
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Had you actually been paying attention to the thread you would see that no one is having this problem...........except you.
 
Bell206 said:
Ask them. Ask to see their required check list. Ask them how they perform individual tasks on their check list. Educate yourself on the requirements of an annual so as to provide yourself a foundation on what transpires during an annual. I've always been a fan of requiring a pilot or owner to learn the basics of what it takes for an aircraft to remain airworthy so that they can make those determinations you ask about. After all your the one who is held responsible for the aircraft's airworthiness.
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:thumbsup::thumbsup:
 
Dan Thomas said:
Don't take it to a shop that does cheap annuals unless there's a good reason they're inexpensive, such as owner-assisted. Don't tell the shop that the annual can't cost more than $XX. A lot of this stuff is driven by owners that can't really afford the airplane, and the defects start to pile up over the years they own it. Some the mechanic finds but they get deferred because the repair is expensive. Some the mechanic doesn't find because the customer wouldn't or couldn't pay for the time to open things up enough to find them. As far as owner-assisted annuals, some shops or their insurance companies won't let the owner in to take stuff apart and open up the inspection panels, and a lot of owners are elsewhere at work during the shop's working hours anyway. And some owners are simply not interested in mechanical stuff or in getting a bit dirty.

And this is why the "first" annual a new owner gets often tends to be expensive. A thorough prebuy as part of a thorough annual can catch a lot of the grief before the sale, and the sale price sometimes has to come down a lot.

I was always suspicious of any annual that never found any defects.
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Very well stated! :)
 
How many of us are driving cars from the 70s? I don’t get an annual on my car, I drive it until something breaks not worth fixing, or there is enough wear and tear that I don’t want to deal with and I buy a new car. I’d get into someone’s beater because if something broke, we’d pull over and I’d uber home.

I can’t afford a new airplane every 5-10 years, and if something breaks I might kill me and my passengers. If airplanes were allowed to be maintained solely on condition, some would be fine because they have owners who stay on top of things, but some would have major issues because things would break and get ignored until they caused a tragedy. I like looking at my airplane’s logs and knowing it has been cared for over the last 47 years.
 
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