There’s a thread in beechtalk about that, and it gives me the creeps. Reason is, it’s not just the flight hours and the number of landings, which are well documented, but also the unknown stuff, such as how often have full flaps been activated at too high an airspeed or in turbulence, or how often have the outer wings been smashed against the hangar door just enough to cause an invisible crack inside but no dent on the wing surface. And so on. The front and aft spars and the two bolts there are comparably thin, and fragile, and once there’s a crack or corrosion there, the wing starts moving slightly, just so that you don’t realize it, but enough for the main spar to carry the weight and pull and push forces. And that can happen earlier than the 10k flight hours. If you buy a used PA28, how do you know how it’s been treated ?
It’s pretty frightening, I must say. When I bought the Beech, one day I was in heavy turbulence with my flight instructor, and he said, in this plane I can do that, in a Piper I wouldn’t be in the air now.
EuroFlyer wrote:
When I bought the Beech, one day I was in heavy turbulence with my flight instructor, and he said, in this plane I can do that, in a Piper I wouldn’t be in the air now.
Really, now? How many Pipers have lost their wings in the air? How may Beechcraft?
Quoting myself from this thread The Aviation Consumer (Feb 1980) article that provided the data is ‘out there’.
Silvaire wrote:
V tail Beech Bonanzas averaged about one fatality per month due to inflight structural failures over a period of about 30 years, late 40s to roughly 1980 when FAA applied some ADs that apparently worked well. Three or four hundred fatalities in all, IIRC. I’m sure most of those were weather related, in conjunction with rudimentary IMC instrumentation and the characteristics of the plane and pilots.
In typical American style (long, slow, little content, but easy to follow), a video on the proposed AD:
The interesting but for most owners: whilst, going by the hours and number of 100h-inspections most of the aircraft out there will NOT require inspection, if there are any logbooks missing, then the inspection WILL be required.
if there are any logbooks missing, then the inspection WILL be required.
That is true for any “lifed” ior cycle-limited parts; if you don’t have the logs then all such parts have to be changed, potentially scrapping the aircraft.
In practice owners in that situation stay with the same maintenance company “for ever”, as a “mutual destruction treaty” between two equally guilty parties 
Variations of this situation are quite common e.g. if a company which illegally installed some avionics is also the one that signs off your Annual, you just stay with them for ever. It just means you cannot sell the plane, other than by subterfuge, or to someone who will use the same company.
Peter wrote:
That is true for any “lifed” ior cycle-limited parts; if you don’t have the logs then all such parts have to be changed, potentially scrapping the aircraft.Not necessarily — there may be other records of part age such as invoices, documentation sent to your CAA etc. My club lost the technical logs of an aircraft in a fire once. It was possible to recreate them without having to replace all timed items.
I see that today Mr Trump has been forced to start paying fedral officials again so expect the FAA to start moving on this.
“I see that today Mr Trump has been forced to start paying fedral officials again so expect the FAA to start moving on this.”
Forced or allowed? He didn’t want the shutdown.
Maoraigh wrote:
He didn’t want the shutdown.
That is a matter of interpretation. Maybe he didn’t want the shutdown as such, but he certainly did want it as a device to blackmail Congress.
Checks on power (including Congressional power) are very much an intended part of the US Government system. Federal employees get an extra paid vacation in this circumstance, which is the unfortunate side effect for taxpayer assuming you think that some fraction of them would otherwise be doing something useful. Those incapable of saving a few weeks pay to deal with the cash flow issue do tend to complain. The bigger political motivation to make a deal is tax season, starting February 1st, and a large number of people having their refunds delayed.
Re undocumented radio installations, mods, logbooks etc. I have rarely (if ever) run into an aircraft that had none at all and in the real world annual inspections do not scap aircraft for that reason. My aircraft like most have a lot of undocumented stuff, installed and performed over the decades, but mostly I’m the only one who knows about it. Mechanics (IAs) aren’t familiar enough to see it, and probably would prefer not to see it!
I don’t think either of planes has any ‘lifed’ components, although if maintenance records were lost there are some hours based ADs that would take a day to re-do.
