This made me think, but didn’t want to risk a thread drift there. I haven’t found a thread related to this.
What are your typical down times due to the annual inspection?
I’m asking because so far I’ve done my annuals myself and I was ok if it took maybe 6 weeks until it was back in the air. The reason was not the annual itself, but it was either extra work that I’ve combined with the annual, or, maybe the main reason for delays, it was typically due to ordering parts for work that I had not foreseen, and that I decided every time to do at once, because I hate to postpone this. And I did it all in the free time. And finally my examiner had to overlook some special tasks and we had to schedule this. So there were reasons for this. But I thought this to be a rather longish time span.
Now I’d be interested in your experiences. I’ve got no shop experience so far. How long does it normally take until you get your steed back? And what was your longest experience and why?
It takes a couple of days. Very occasionally, we have had to wait a few weeks when an unusual spare part was needed.
2 to 3 days, everything pre-arranged and parts pre-ordered, no surprises in 9 years of DA42 and 5 years of TB20.
Usually do it over a period of 3 days or so, we fly down to our LAA inspector’s airfield (which has a really nice B&B almost on the airfield, so it’s a nice trip in of itself). Occasionally it has taken more if we’ve discovered something that needs parts ordered and there’s a delay.
Normally a couple of weeks, generally because things that can be deferred but need a longer period of downtime wait until then.
Having said that, currently in a very protracted one as getting airframe parts is taking forever.
PA46 annual + 100h service was 2.5 weeks of which 1 week was waiting for a new battery to arrive
I’ll update when it’s complete. But last year the 6 month check took 5 months…
The joys of owning a twin Comanche
PA46 annual. They always promise two weeks and it always takes three. Immutable law of aviation.
The cynic in me says it’s harder to justify a £5k annual on a PA28 if you do it in less than a fortnight.
Annual and 100H etc. 5K annual (new to me and MRO aircraft on a Rallye 893 took was completed in 14 days, without any of the extras that I had requested. Normally it´s nominated to be 5 full working days. Time will tell if this is ever going to be the case.
