Frankly I think they're barking up the wrong tree, but the lawyers probably saw bigger pockets.
The family of the commercial applicant have already sued Piper over it. So kudos to the FAA for exercising some modicum of common sense on this one.so far. We're more than a year from the accident flight and so far nobody has died on account of wings falling off, which by the way the thing read initially I should have lost both wings by now. To be fair to the FAA, they are exercising a much greater degree of nuance this time around compared to the last time they went wing-pulling on the PA-28s in the 80s. File that under irony in the cabinet of FAA knee-jerk. Variant which is about as removed from an ERAU complex fleet trainer as it can pretty much get. The only one they found to merit the invasive/damaging inspection over the useful life of the airframe was the one, and only, PA-28-235. You only quoted the first part of the letter.
Other than doing a good preflight (particularly on unfamiliar aircraft), I wouldn't be too concerned about this in regard to a typical fixed gear flight school Cherokee. I suspect the actual number of aircraft that will be impacted by this AD will be a lot smaller than many people are saying. Those that fail the inspection would require complete new wing spar replacements at a cost of somewhere around $18,000 (ouch). Then, those subject to eddy current inspection would cost a few more hours and about another $380 to complete the inspection and do the paperwork. It goes on to say that for all other aircraft included in the proposed AD, (PA28-140 included) the risks from "disturbing the joint" (wing spar to spar carry-through) outweigh the risks of undiscovered metal fatigue in those locations.Įven on those aircraft more likely to be subject, the list would be further pared down with 2 hours of review to determined "factored" time in service, at a cost of about $170.
#Piper preflight inspection series#
There was an NTSB letter in reply to the FAA's proposed AD, dated 15 February, which stated that they support the AD for PA28-235, All PA28R series aircraft, and the PA32-260 and PA32-300 aircraft.
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