Seat upholstery / flammability certification

Take achima comments as vey prudent.

I upgraded my interior, through a Part M shop, whilst under EASA. They did not even put a log book entry. They then denied they had actually completed the work. On checking, they had got a local car upholsterer to supply the materials, and guess what.

No certificates, no records, no responsibility. I will also point out that they told me verbally, all was in order re certs. To add insult to injury, the CAA inspector sided with the shop, and told me it was my responsibility as the owner/operator.

I was not that happy about that incident. But I learnt a lot………..

Caused me no end of expensive and difficult grief when I changed to N reg. got through it, but was a complete PITA.

Did an interior job my bird before it became N registered. All leather and carpets used are backed up with FAA burn certificates.
If you can’t produce that it can become a show stopper when changing reg’s (I know of some cases)

I say this flammability B.S. serves no practical use. Whenever there is a serious accident there is mostly heavy fire that consumes the biggest part of the aircraft, including the passengers – and no matter, if certified material was used, no difference. Much more thought should be given to chances of survivability in cases of aircraft with one single door or two of these. We never learn about this aspect from accident investigations as it is often hard to tell how long people lived after impact for trying to vacate the burning aircraft. A discussion about on board fire extinguishers and their usefulness would be a similar topic. In both cases I´d give an inspector a hard life in a discussion if common sense was a material he had been spared by mother nature ……… Why do I think of the Swiss Air drama over the US coast in the 90ies , certified material , extinguishers and all …… ? Vic

This is a pretty good article on upholstery issues, at least for N-registered aircraft.

Avweb Article

If the plane is old enough, the certification requirements are much less. It basically fades to nothing.

Aviation Pros Article

There are also practical advantages to having an unusual plane.

I was contacted by an acft owner a couple of weeks ago when an FAA Inspector challenged him for burn certs on his beautiful recent leather interior in a Beech Baron.

He was really sweating it thinking he was going to have to rip it all out as some have suggested here.

Not so !

We cut small samples out from places that would not show and sent them to a lab that does burn testing.

Cost all in $200 and took 10 days to complete.

…… which tells a lot about the character of this “inspector” from the FAA. He could as well have ignored this new leather to deal with other items that do have safety issues. Instead he persists to show his “competence”. I´d ask him to prove that in case of an accident this issue may have any consequence for the people on board. In fact, they burn to death in minutes on the ground, irrespective of certified material or not. And that applies to contemporary certified airliners in the same way ! Vic

Vic – Very true, but this sadly is the norm, these guys wanna see paper more than anything else, so you just give them their paper and get on with the serious stuff !

PS: Believe it or not, Inspectors read the Euro GA Forum, ask me how I knoiw !

They are welcome to read my comments. When it´s B.S. then I say it´s B.S. . And it is verily a matter of their character if they were so obsessed with insisting on dealing with this B.S. instead of caring for other things on the plane. Many times you may see things but it is up to you if you want to actually deal with them, or look away. Demonstrated competence is something that I respect about inspectors – but not stubbornness linked with B.S. . Vic

Cessna Seat Refurb

My plan was to try and get the seats of our project U206 as good as we could. I like the idea of sheepskin which has the feeling of keeping you elevated off the seat. I wanted to get headrests that fit, and were high enough to be useful. I found all three trim pieces that go with the seat (Left/Right/Back) as they generally make the seat nicely finished, and hold the seatbelts in place. Looking at other Cessna’s I could see the side to side rocking and fore and aft play was mostly down to the seat rollers. The rollers wear plus there is play in the bolt and bushing. Cessna also chooses to use the Royalite plastic material which we all know turns brittle and doesn’t age. I decided to use two McFarlane kits SK1/SK2 and change the AN23-19A Bolts/Nuts/Washers to get a good solid base. The seat frame itself was originally painted in Cessna cream two pack, someone previously blew it over in matt black with an aerosol. I got a 2 pack paint match from my Selkirk interior panels and on Tuesday I’ll paint the bases up. Coming from an aeroplane that had no interior fitted when we rescued it, all this is a big improvement.

Finished Seat

The old rollers and hardware coming out

You have been lucky that the frames needed so little work.