AV Web SIDS Article 12-24-09

[hharney]

Roger
If history repeats itself the 400 series aircraft owners tried the legal system when these inspections were planned for their fleet. They lost, and their inspection rolled into an AD for the 402 aircraft. Although their safety record was not as clean as ours the potential is there for the FAA to mandate these inspections.

Call me naive but after being at the meetings in Wichita earlier this month I don't think Cessna is truly out to ground these aircraft. I believe that the engineering department has a philosophy that these inspections are inconvenient but should be performed to verify the safe airworthiness of the aircraft. The problem is their philosophy comes from the jet/turbine family that can afford to do these inspections based on the value of the aircraft. Your SOAPA SID team pressed this issue at the meeting and it opened the eyes of the Cessna Customer Service Department to the potential negative impact of owners concerning these inspections. I just hope, as it says in the AvWeb story that Cessna takes a hard look at this potential issue before they give engineering a green light to proceed.

[Skymaster337B]

Call me crazy, but it seems like a simple (and perhaps less expensive) x-ray inspection might reveal the same thing. Who knows how much more damage will occur with the typical wing removal. My vote is for x-ray inspections. How do you think they do this on a 747? X-rays of course.

[tropical]

Originally Posted by hharney

Roger
If history repeats itself the 400 series aircraft owners tried the legal system when these inspections were planned for their fleet. They lost, and their inspection rolled into an AD for the 402 aircraft. Although their safety record was not as clean as ours the potential is there for the FAA to mandate these inspections.

Call me naive but after being at the meetings in Wichita earlier this month I don't think Cessna is truly out to ground these aircraft. I believe that the engineering department has a philosophy that these inspections are inconvenient but should be performed to verify the safe airworthiness of the aircraft. The problem is their philosophy comes from the jet/turbine family that can afford to do these inspections based on the value of the aircraft. Your SOAPA SID team pressed this issue at the meeting and it opened the eyes of the Cessna Customer Service Department to the potential negative impact of owners concerning these inspections. I just hope, as it says in the AvWeb story that Cessna takes a hard look at this potential issue before they give engineering a green light to proceed.

Herb, you are naive. Cessna never envisioned these airplanes to be flying 30+ years later and carrying the liability of the manufacturer with them. Also old airplanes take away from the sale of new airplanes.

Cessna is simply using it's engineering department as a means to further "weed out" more of these airframes.