From here
There was a new law introduced un France this year which makes it obligatory for manufacturers to support all products for a period of 12 years. Whether it would be any use in this particular incidence, I don’t know but paying the euro to the justice department might be a good way to find out.
Not really no. I just remember it coming up on France 24 whilst it was going through the parliament. If I get the time I will look it up in the Journal.
@Peter you’re going to love this. I accidentally came across the law when looking at something else in the J.O.
It’s called “the anti waste bill for a circular economy”
The scope of the law is very wide and deals with general issues regarding waste, but also production and consumption tackling premature obsolence. In other words if its within a 12 year period everything should be repairable or upgradeable.
Its a long text which was started in 2019 and went through parliament in 2020. I’m not sure where it stands now. I am going to have to dig it out of the J.O. and read it thoroughly.
gallois wrote:
In other words if its within a 12 year period everything should be repairable or upgradeable.
Wow. I think not only Peter is going to love this but seeing that he operates a French plane….
12 years is a good period of time, but in Aviation it may fall short of what is really needed. It would not really help on the G1000 front as the old G1000 series are already significantly older, so are the 430/530 series which can’t get repaired anymore. But it sure will hit the electronics industry, where models are only sold for 2-3 years now. Apple and Samsung for starters will have to think 2ce now.
You might recall that I got a huge grudge at Airbus on the demise of the Caravelle, when Airbus pulled the C of A and let several operators with airworthy Caravelles out in the dry. All of them were grounded as a result, not even the Museum one in Sweden is allowed to fly thanks to this.
(They pulled the same story on Concorde too, even though differently. they just made keeping the CofA open too expensive for BA to carry it alone but that is another story).
Personally I think no manufacturer should have the right to restrict the use of any product you have once rightfully purchased. If they don’t want to support it anymore, that is a different story but they should not have the right to actually pull the plug on anyone else supporting them. I know they can’t do this (or simply don’t) with smaller airplanes such as the TB series or even older stuff like the Moranes e.t.c. but the example of the Caravelle created shockwaves through the industry at the time. I guess quite unexpectedly for them as there were only about 5 airworthy ones left of which 1 the said museum piece and the other 4 in Africa, but the Industry took note.
What kind of goods does this involve? What about hand made stuff, companies with 1 or 2 persons, and they die in an accident.
I purchase a handmade wooden boat from a master boat builder, he drowns, then what?
I wonder what take @nestor has on this?
With these kinds of laws, the detail will be in the implementation, and the implementation is “obviously impossible” to be as simple as this. The ability to get anything repaired for 12 years would destroy much of the consumer economy.
Perhaps it will be like the WEEE directive (one of many from Brussels) where companies are required to take back scrapped products. This directive is basically dead now. I don’t know the details but do know that the cost of returning the item had to be borne by the returning party and in most cases that totally kills the proposition; most people and companies already pay for garbage collection (many private individuals get it for free) and it is much cheaper to chuck the item in the garbage. The way to kill this French law will similarly be by requiring the returning party to pay for the carriage, which together with some repair charge will effectively nullify the whole thing.
@LeSving one would have to read the whole of the law but I would expect it to have taken a pragmatic approach, ie if a customer feels that something should be repairable, there is something in the law which would either allow for it or dismiss it. If it doesn’t you put it before a judge to decide. A small civil disagreement could always, in the past, be tested and decided by paying the judicial department €1. The Gendarmes/police attached to the department would then call all the people involved to present themselves for interview. When they had got all the statements, they would put a dossier to judge, who would make a ruling.
The information on this may not be up to date as its not something that people in my circle resort to every day.
LeSving wrote:
I purchase a handmade wooden boat from a master boat builder, he drowns, then what?
I think the boat builder will be too dead to worry about providing you service. But a wooden boat is perhaps the exemplar of something that’s easily repairable in the field by anyone with wooden boat building skills (including in many cases the owner), and doesn’t need the unfortunate drowned boat builder specifically if you need to have something fixed.
It’s not like an electronic product which has some ASIC die which is now unobtainium, and essentially now completely unrepairable by anyone.
In aviation, life cycles are rather long. The regulatory and cyclic economical environments mean that the average age of the active GA fleet is above that 12 years threshold. I don’t have actual numbers, but I have little doubt it is probably twice that long.
What Airbus did with the Caravelle should not be allowed. However , what they did with Concorde is reasonable: you want us to continue supporting? Then please pay the reasonable costs.
In a away that is what Textron, Piper and Daher do supporting aircraft decades out of production: charge outrageous costs for spare parts so there is a business case continuing support for a 40YO aircraft.
In the case of the Cessna 210, Textron supported the enclosed detailed engineering analysis for wing spar cap cracks (effectively proving the spar is still able to support the design loads with a cracked through member in the affected area) but did not charge for any SB in the area.
Cessna_Centurion_Wing_Structural_Assessment_pdf
One would think they would somehow recover with the subsequent spar carry through AD, where a dozen spar carrythrough units have been replaced worldwide due to corrosion to the tune of over 10 AMU/ea for parts, but it is a completely new design (milled vs forged) so I just do not see an economical business case.
The key to get an OEM to engage in this way is if you can get them to identify it as a safety issue. If they don’t, then rarely would they engage in costly low-volume reengineerings decades after production without a business case. I got a few of those t-shirts in the airline world too…
You can consider yourself lucky if the re-engineering was done for a subsequent productionbatch and made available for earlier aircraft at a reasonable cost.
I struggle to think which other industry would continue supporting a product with expensive re-engineerings as above 40 years after end of production, and without customers paying for it.
