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

[Frank Giger]

Between the beers I owe people and the lunches Steve is going to give away the concessions at Airventure are going to have a banner year!

Concurring that the tone needs to come down a bit, a few notes:

1) Steve is right - statistically, the odds of being struck by an airplane while on the ground are so tiny as to not warrant a person's concerns. The person struck on the beach was unfortunate and a freak accident. The light plane that struck a school was in the Phillipines; I am not convinced that the safety standards are the same there as they are in the USA.

To the guy that gets struck by lightning the odds are 1:1 at the precise moment he is hit; however, that doesn't mean it's a major concern we should be worried about. Indeed, the guy struck by lightning has the same chance of being struck again as he did before - basically none.

There's a lesson in our human grounding rod, though, that we can use. Prudent care in situations where the improbable becomes the unlikely has huge rewards. Experimental aircraft, for example, aren't supposed to be flown over populated areas (which apparently is defined on whether or not one hits a house or not); in an engine-out, the pilot should take care on where he puts it down taking the odds of people on the ground into account.

This is the golf course problem. A par five fairway can make for a fine emergency field, but there's the potential for hitting a guy that has just laid up from the woods. Does one reduce the risk to the pilot and passengers and increase the odds for striking a person, or put the odds of a guy that might be on the fairway above those around him and put it into some trees?*

2) The media always fluffs up airplane crashes because they've been trained for something spectactular when it happens. Plane crash = commercial flight with hundreds of people involved. That it's a Cub that put down into a pasture and killed a cow (without loss of human life) makes no never mind - the headline is worth gold....the reader may be disappointed to find out how minor it was, but the point is that he read it to the media.

Add in the "how did that get there" people who buy houses next to local airports and then are shocked to find out that suddenly there are airplanes flying near them and that they make noise to try and remedy the problem in an inverse fashion and it's an unfortunate circus.

3) Guys and gals that build airplanes are in the main much better prepared to maintain their aircraft than those who simply write a check for them. The analogy is folks who customize (or even build) cars and motorcycles. They don't take their rides into the dealership for an oil change or to change a spark plug.

Just because something is permitted doesn't mean it's prudent, and that's the hesitation to the notion of absolving an owner of supervised or professional only maintenance. There is already a lot of flexibility in maintaining a spam can, if one exercises it (and yes, it may mean firing the local A&P for someone else).

* Note the stress on people. To hell with "saving" the aircraft - it was never alive to begin with.

[steveinindy]

Between the beers I owe people and the lunches Steve is going to give away the concessions at Airventure are going to have a banner year!

I'm half tempted to just put together a dinner for everyone one night. I figure if everyone chips in, I can grill the heck out of whatever people want to bring. Then again, I also kicked around the idea of renting a golf car and then riding around with a bucket of ice cold bottles of water and a donation jug. Figure that's one way to raise a little money for my research (which I'm turning into an NPO if the government ever gets off their butt and processes the paperwork) and also help keep people from collapsing.

This is the golf course problem. A par five fairway can make for a fine emergency field, but there's the potential for hitting a guy that has just laid up from the woods. Does one reduce the risk to the pilot and passengers and increase the odds for striking a person, or put the odds of a guy that might be on the fairway above those around him and put it into some trees?*

This is why I've always joked that aircraft should be fitted with horns like cars. Preferably one that plays "Dixie". That'll get people's attention as we're coming in for a landing that should be freeze framed and then narrated by Waylon Jennings.

That it's a Cub that put down into a pasture and killed a cow (without loss of human life) makes no never mind - the headline is worth gold....the reader may be disappointed to find out how minor it was, but the point is that he read it to the media.

I actually have a journal article under review at the moment that makes mention of a cow walking out in front of an aircraft. One of the comments from the reviewers was that he shot coffee out of his nose at the visual. I think he is a city boy who doesn't realize that hitting a cow is just about as bad as hitting a tree (and a lot messier with that prop up front).

The analogy is folks who customize (or even build) cars and motorcycles. They don't take their rides into the dealership for an oil change or to change a spark plug.

Hang around RUBs (rich urban bikers) and you'd be surprised. These are the same guys who have their biked trucked into Sturgis. I mention this only because my uncle happens to be one. During my time in healthcare, I saw surgeons who were less thorough about cleaning under their nails than Tom is. He's so OCD about cleanliness that you couldn't pull a needle out of his butt with a tractor. I can't see him doing any maintenance on the Harley he owns. LOL

[Dana]

I suspect that relaxing the rules on owner maintenance will either have zero effect on safety, or it might even improve it.

For the vast majority of aircraft, it will have no effect at all. Even today, where an owner can legally change the oil, plugs, pack wheel bearings, etc., very few actually do it themselves... just as only a small percentage of automobile owners change their own oil, and even fewer do anything more involved.

Of those airplane owners that are so inclined, they fall into one of three groups:

1. The technically competent guy who's capable of performing just about any repair even though he doesn't have an A&P certificate, and who is competent enough to know his limitations, if any, and get help when necessary.

2. The guy who isn't competent enough to do much more than change his own oil, but has a competent (but non A&P) friend willing to assist when necessary.

3. The guy who isn't competent to do any work, but tries anyway because now he's allowed to, and does a poor job.

Of these three, only the third type is any increased danger. The first is probably doing his own maintenance [illegally] anyway. The first and second are likely to perform needed maintenance sooner under the relaxed rules, rather than waiting to have it done during the annual inspection, or not at all. Some of the third group will screw up (and a very few of those put others in danger), while others in that group will try to do something, get in over their heads, and hire an A&P to fix their mistakes.

Another thing to consider is that the people likely to actually do their own maintenance are owners of older aircraft that many modern trained A&P's aren't comfortable or even competent working on anyway. In many cases the owner knows far more about his aircraft than most any A&P.

In the end, I doubt the change will result in much more owner maintenance being done. What it will do is result in that maintenance being properly logged (and then checked more carefully by an IA during the annual). Net result: Increased safety.

[aosunaiv]

Good morning, steveinindy,

I apologize. I'll try not to firewall the throttle in our future exchanges.

I'm Al, BTW, good to meet you. If you're ever down here for Sun 'n Fun, lunch is on me.

[Bill Berson]

Very good post Dana.

I still have not been able to read the proposal yet. But if it contained some training for the owner, to achieve an Equivalent Level of Safety (ELOS)*, then the FAA might approve this.


* see the recent EAA blog about ELOS: http://macsblog.com/2012/03/third-cl...-and-faa-elos/

[rwanttaja]

Very good post Dana.

I still have not been able to read the proposal yet....

Bill, I did a text conversion of the proposal and attached it, in two parts. Two parts because text files are limited to 20k....

Ron Wanttaja

[aosunaiv]

Very good post Dana.

I still have not been able to read the proposal yet. But if it contained some training for the owner, to achieve an Equivalent Level of Safety (ELOS)*, then the FAA might approve this.


* see the recent EAA blog about ELOS: http://macsblog.com/2012/03/third-cl...-and-faa-elos/

Good afternoon, Bill,

This PDF should do the trick.

Proposal to ARC V4.pdf

[rwanttaja]

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.

Sorry, don't agree with this. I compared homebuilt accidents with a "control group" of Cessna 172/210s, and got practically the same rate of maintenance-induced accidents. For aircraft with more than 40 hours, the rate is actually a bit higher. This is probably due to similar accidents in the 0-40 hour period being assessed as builder error rather than maintenance error.

Still, it's a good sign...I hadn't expected homebuilts to come out so close. And as others have mentioned, this is an extremely small portion of the total accidents (4-5%).

Ron Wanttaja

[Bill Berson]

Thanks Ron and aos, I was able to read both. It appears others are downloading the file as well.

My comment after reading is this:

Finding an A&P willing to perform a condition inspection and logbook signature with the associated risk, might be difficult.
It would be better if the owner could do the condition inspection as well, perhaps with some additional training. This way the owner assumes the risk. It would be very hard for a mechanic to assume this risk, insurance could be maybe 5K-10K or impossible to get.

It should be possible to maintain a non-commercial aircraft without involving any other person, in my opinion.

Bill Berson
A&P I.A. (but not signing any logbooks, other than my own, at this time, for liability reasons)

[Joe LaMantia]

WOW!

This thread really took-off with full Afterburner on Military Power! I wasn't planning on going to OSH this year but with all the free food and drinks being offered I may just take another look at my summer schedule.
I did manage to download the file on my IMac running OS 10.5/Leopard with no problems. The give and take here has been excellent and entertaining as well. I don't think I can actually add anything to this discussion, all the pro's and con's are right here and should make the FAA's job easy.

Best to All,

Joe