Closing the hangar door on the aeroplane works well 
If it damages an airframe part which is no longer available…
I wonder about the TB20 composite roof. Socata can repair it but I would be amazed if they have any spare.
They can still repair a lot of sheet metal damage although one would expect that, since it is all doable using standard repair procedures.
Another way to do it is this where an installer started on a job, and hacked out the panel, before having the STC in his hand. In that case, the existence (or not) of an STC remains a great mystery, with the manufacturer denying they were ever sponsoring it, but another shop (unrelated to that job) offering it before that so it must have been true at some point. Then a dispute between the shop and the customer prevents the aircraft going anywhere (6 years so far in this case AFAIK) and the aircraft is eventually worthless because a) the engine has not been run b) the plane cannot move because the panel has been hacked out c) nobody will perform an Annual on it d) the hangar owner has issued a hangarage bill which is way more than any possible value of the aircraft
And the above is way more common than you would think. There are loads of planes sitting around airports, under a dispute, and it is obvious that many of these are unairworthy. A friend was looking at one such (PA28) and when doing an external inspection (of it sitting on the ramp) he was threatened with physical violence if he probed too hard Such disputes are incredibly common in the motor trade, where there are specific legal rules for it. I even had it on a £1.5k mountain bike but managed to extract it from the shop (in parts).
My guess is these issues may be solved after EASA 21.A.307 becomes applicable from May 18 2022 → / instructions for continued airworthiness, the production of parts to be used during maintenance and the consideration of ageing aircraft aspects during certification / installation of parts without an EASA Form 1 / owner accepted and owner produced parts (basis see regulation (EU) 2021/699) .
I suspect that some see a genuine accident as an opportunity to make some money on the buy back of the wreckage for parts, while this is a legitimate business stance it becomes fraud when the damaged aircraft is unsympathetically recovered.
I know of one owner who was very p***ed off when the insurer sent the aircraft to a repair company , clearly the recovery of the aircraft had been done with little care in the hope and expectation the aircraft would be written off.
Lawyers were engaged by the owner and tried all sorts of moves to get the aircraft written off along with putting all sorts of obstacles in the way of the company repairing the aircraft.
Eventually after a satisfactory inspection by the manufacturer the owners had to accept the aircraft.
A_and_C wrote:
I know of one owner who was very p***ed off when the insurer sent the aircraft to a repair company , clearly the recovery of the aircraft had been done with little care in the hope and expectation the aircraft would be written off.
A_and_C wrote:
Eventually after a satisfactory inspection by the manufacturer the owners had to accept the aircraft.
Could you elaborate?
I mean I read it as it was not recovered with care (so damaged even more), but then fully repaired and confirmed so by the manufacturer.
Is my understanding correct? If yes, then what was the problem? Sorry, just genuinely don’t understand.
Thanks!
Our experience of insurance companies, all before 2000, was good. We lost 7 months flying each time however, which meant it would have been a poor deliberate policy.
I heard of an insurance company who hired a contractor to recover a Jodel. The wing is a single structure. He sawed them off, making it unrepairable.
Bob Bevan is nowhere to be seen
Another way to total your plane is this sort of thing. And I am not referring to dodgy wx; I mean just any incident at any number of GA airfields in Europe, from where a non-flyable plane would need to come out on the back of a truck, which will in many cases cause a writeoff.
One TB20 owner had to cart back a TB20 from Turkey, on the orders of the insurer. That plane was recovered however. Scilly Isles would cause anything worth less than about 50k to be a writeoff.
I wonder whether getting stuck somewhere features in anyone’s decisionmaking? For example most Greek airports have zero maintenance facilities.
