New small airplane laws may allow owner Owner Maintenance!!!

[Bill Berson]

Welcome to the forum AOS. Unfortunately your comment is not correct. Any person can perform maintenance on any experimental homebuilt aircraft because FAR 43 excludes experimental homebuilts.

You probably meant to say that only the builder can qualify for the limited repairman certificate to do the annual condition inspection. Only the condition inspection requires an A&P(or repairman). The maintenance, including major repairs or alterations can be performed by anyone.

In my experience, there doesn't seem to be much of a problem with owners performing preventive maintenance items listed under FAR 43 App A. on certified aircraft (where FAR 43 does apply). But FAR 43.3 does require that the owner or operator have a pilot certificate. I think this requirement for a pilot certificate insures some competency in the view of the FAA, because all pilots have to pass a written test which includes some limited questions about maintenance, engines etc.

I support this proposal to allow owner maintenance.

[martymayes]

I support a proposal for owner maintenance. Unless it's pretty simplistic, a final rule is not likely to have much resemblence to it's proposed version.

[aosunaiv]

Welcome to the forum AOS. Unfortunately your comment is not correct.

Good afternoon, Bill. Thanks for the corrective assist. I agree with the intent of the document, but still have to disagree with making ADs optional. Have a good one.

[Ylinen]

I think this proposal is just the type that needs to be seriously considered. Small GA is dying. The FAA has built up an oversight program for small GA that is akin to what they do with Airliners. No other form of personal transportation is so regulated and expensive. In my opinion; non-Commercial GA should be regulated just like personal boating. The Tort system for non-commercial GA should be overhauled. No Widow should be able to sue any OEM or vendor. If her husband did not have adequate insurance for her; then that is between them. No lawyer should get rich taking the $ out of an OEM. Only if there was proven negligence should there be any recourse.

This proposal bring some common sense back to small GA. Add to this that the medical requirement for small GA should be the same as for personal autos or boats.

The one thing that could be done is to provide for a common group insurance program similar to flood insurance run the government that if any non-commercial GA aircraft injuries or kills someone on the ground or damages their property; the would be fairly compensated. The vast majority of small GA non-commercial accidents do not harm any public.

Small GA can not continue with aircraft costing over $500K. We are being regulated out of existence which is what the FAA and airlines want.

I hope the Part 23 ARC considers this type of major proposal changes.

[Richard Warner]

I had no problem opening the file. I wonder how the FAA is going to take to something like this one? Hope it goes through.

[Ylinen]

Hello everyone, new guy here. The file was an interesting read, but I have to agree with the folks that believe the ability to blow off an AD is a bad thing. Additionally, I think most of us know it, but it wasn't stated here that the reason that EAB builders have expanded maintenance privileges, is because they BUILT the airplane. If they didn't build the airplane, then they'd have to seek competent technical personnel to perform anything other than minor maintenance, unless they received additional training. Finally, how many times have we read about non A&P personnel performing unauthorized maintenance, that cost them their lives? Thanks for listening.

BTW, I know there are sub-par A&Ps out there, as well.

The NTSB database does not support your claim. There are far more MIF (Maintenance induced Failures) by A&Ps then for AB aircraft maintained by owner after the 40 hour phase 1. Owner maintenance has not produced a higher accident rate. And just to be fair; the majority of accidents are pilot errors not aircraft failures. Also; there are really very few accidents each year on the total and very few due to maintenance. So do we really need all the regulation and cost to manage a very small incident? What we need are bold changes to Small GA so that it can grow and start to get some economies of scale.

[Bill Berson]

Can anyone else open the file with a Mac?
The file was made with PC. If anyone else with a mac can open, perhaps my Mac is out dated (5 years old with Adobe Reader 5).

[steveinindy]

There are far more MIF (Maintenance induced Failures) by A&Ps then for AB aircraft maintained by owner after the 40 hour phase 1.

I'm not saying you are off the mark, but I would like to point out that you have to be careful saying "Well, there are more of X than Y in the NTSB database and that means...." because, in this case, there a lot more planes getting maintained by A&Ps than by non-A&Ps.

What we need are bold changes to Small GA so that it can grow and start to get some economies of scale.

I agree with the caveat that one must not be so bold as to forget that just because we have an endpoint in mind that we must not do anything that might hurt what we have now, let alone the chances of obtaining that goal. In other words, "bold changes" when it comes to a hobby that depends on level-headed and well thought out approaches to keep from killing the people engaging in it may not be the best approach.

And just to be fair; the majority of accidents are pilot errors not aircraft failures.

Just to be fair, the average investigation for a small plane crash- especially a homebuilt- is not nearly as thorough as it should or could be. It's not horrible, but I have a feeling that if one really went digging we would probably find more crashes where one of the contributing factors was a mechanical failure (very few crashes are truly due to a single mechanical failure; even crashes where the engine goes out, most of them that kill people involve pilot error leading to a stall or something similar that compounds the problem) especially in the first 100 hours or so of flight than a lot of us would like to admit.

[aosunaiv]

Not disagreeing with the concept. We need to demonstrate due diligence and consideration in any implementation. I could care less if a pilot removes him or herself from the gene pool, due to technical incompetence, with respect to aircraft maintenance. I just hope someone isn't with him or her. However, I am concerned for the safety of the non-aviation personnel, on the ground, that their aircraft may come down upon due to the fact that we fly over populated areas. I get the feeling this may be the FAA point of view, as well. Too many people seem to forget that ours is an unforgiving hobby/sport/what-have-you and that most lessons are written in blood.

[aosunaiv]

With 2 Macs, an iPhone and an iPad. What type of Mac, OS version, and browser are you using?

I'm typing this on a mid 2005 iBook with a 1.42GHz G4 PPC processor.