AV Web SIDS Article 12-24-09
 

http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archive...1538-full.html

Wing Inspections Eyed For High Wing Cessnas

http://www.avweb.com/newspics/cessna337.jpg

The president of the Cessna Skymasters Owners and Pilots Association says thousands of Cessna high-wing aircraft could be affected by a potentially expensive new wing inspection procedure proposed by the company. Herb Harney told AVweb the Supplemental Inspection Documents (SIDs) now being prepared by Cessna will require the removal of the wings of Cessna 336 and 337 push/pull twins, to check wing attach and strut attach bolt fittings for cracks and corrosion. In the U.S., the inspections will be voluntary but those in Part 135 service will be guided by the standard operating procedures of the operator. Harney said that in other countries, however, recommendations by the manufacturer must be met and Skymasters are scattered all over the world. The process is complicated and could cost as much as $60,000 per airplane, more than many Skymasters are currently worth. But the Skymaster shares the same basic wing hardware with all the other Cessna high wings and, under Cessna's current thinking, any aircraft more than 20 years old would be subject to the SIDs, Harney said. AVweb contacted Cessna for comment but the company was unable to respond by our deadline. Harney said U.S. operators may not necessarily escape the inspections.


Harney said Cessna is currently planning on rewriting the aircraft service manuals to include the inspection recommendations. He said maintenance companies, with their normal abundance of caution, may require the inspections before signing off on the aircraft because of the service manual amendments. If that became a common practice, more than 140,000 aircraft could be affected. Harney stressed that the SIDs are still being developed and could be changed but he also said that Cessna is planning implementation of the first SIDs by July of 2010, starting with Cessna 336 models.

What a great scam to force the public into buying your new products. This joke is ripe for a lawsuit. Can you imagine if some sleaze bag marketing exec at Ford tried to get the old Mustangs off the road by claiming that you had to take the entire car apart to see if a bolt was loose, and you couldn't do it yourself. Unbelievable.
We should approach AOPA or the Cessna Owners association to bring a lawsuit to stop this total farce. This will potentially be the end of GA as you know it if it's allowed to happen.

Roger
If history repeats itself the 400 series aircraft owners tried the legal system when these inspections were planned for their fleet. They lost, and their inspection rolled into an AD for the 402 aircraft. Although their safety record was not as clean as ours the potential is there for the FAA to mandate these inspections.

Call me naive but after being at the meetings in Wichita earlier this month I don't think Cessna is truly out to ground these aircraft. I believe that the engineering department has a philosophy that these inspections are inconvenient but should be performed to verify the safe airworthiness of the aircraft. The problem is their philosophy comes from the jet/turbine family that can afford to do these inspections based on the value of the aircraft. Your SOAPA SID team pressed this issue at the meeting and it opened the eyes of the Cessna Customer Service Department to the potential negative impact of owners concerning these inspections. I just hope, as it says in the AvWeb story that Cessna takes a hard look at this potential issue before they give engineering a green light to proceed.

Call me crazy, but it seems like a simple (and perhaps less expensive) x-ray inspection might reveal the same thing. Who knows how much more damage will occur with the typical wing removal. My vote is for x-ray inspections. How do you think they do this on a 747? X-rays of course.

Herb, you are naive. Cessna never envisioned these airplanes to be flying 30+ years later and carrying the liability of the manufacturer with them. Also old airplanes take away from the sale of new airplanes.

Cessna is simply using it's engineering department as a means to further "weed out" more of these airframes.

There is no lawsuit to be had in this. What's your argument? Cessna is placing safety concerns on 30+ year old aircraft?

Cessna is well aware of what they are doing, just go back and review the 400 series Cessna program.

It was my underatnding that there was a "problem" with the 400 series aircraft, and a logical and responsible step was taken to inspect these aircraft due to said "demonstrated" problems. This much like an engine or other components that have "demonstrated" that certain things will happen after a certain time (years or hours of use) , and are as such life limited.

But that's not the same thing here. This is a totally and completely different set of circumstances where there has not been any proven of demonstrated "occurence" that would reasonably require this action, be it on 336's - 337's or any other high wing Cessna, that has been flown inside the normal envelope.

I'm not a conspiracy nut, I am a businessman. And I know the difference between a scam and reasonable practices. While this may seem like a great deal to the A&P's out there, it is well worth fighting on behalf of the owners and operators of these aircraft.



I

Responses
 

While it is great to post here, I suggest all who have something to say about this also post at AvWeb. There is a function called AVMail.
It will get a wider response, and serve to broaden the discussion.

http://www.avweb.com/avmail/

Yes, Indeed
 

Cessna does want to pull the wings off your airplane

http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archive...1545-full.html

It is on the AOPA newsletter also

http://us.mg201.mail.yahoo.com/dc/la...=9fmt0kpsr3cmo

Rick
 

Will this SID blanket cover all 336 and 337s, or is an AFTT number associated with it?

It All Depends
 

The short answer is yes.
The long answer is it depends. If you take your airplane to a Cessna authorized service center, they will do the inspections according to the new book. If you are only Part 91, and in the USA, your IA may require that you follow the new book, regardless of where you take it. Your IA may be convinced to follow the old book, your existing service manual. Again, it will depend on who and where the inspections are being done. Then again, regardless of where you take it, your insurance company may insist on compliance, as a condition of maintaining insurance coverage.

I say new book, because the SIDs will be incorporated into a new service manual.

Oh, missed this part of your question.

A. If the airframe is over 20 years old, the SIDS apply.

And there is a Skymaster newer than 20 years old?

I was being a bit facetious.
No,
Which is the point. All Skymasters are eligible for SIDs. Makes it simple. No age discrimination. :mad:

http://www.stuckmic.com/news/9461-ce...html#post88278


http://www.pprune.org/dg-p-general-a...st5402609.html

I predict that a couple of years after Cessna releases the SID, they will then announce the production of new Skymasters.

Don't think that will ever happen, Adam already tried. Huge failure and the industry is just not ready for another Skymaster and probably never will be.

Herb
I am reminded of an old song

Never Say Never!

The problem would be is that no one could afford a new Skymaster. That's why Adam failed. Who would spend that much money given the performance and abilities of the aircraft. We should feel lucky that we have such solid birds for what they cost.

It all depends on the mission required. Most of the time mine is more than I need but I sure love it that way.

I do agree to Never say Never (look at the flying wing design from Northrup Grumman),

I think the new aviation environment of fuel cost, insurance, and other factors favor the high performance singles rather than twin engine aircraft. Without a lot of pilots flying twin engine aircraft, they don't encounter the danger of asymetric thrust when an engine fails. It seemed that was a large portion of my training when I flew a C-310. There are a few twin engine aircraft like the Diamond Twin Star, but with their FADEC systems, they shutdown and feather the engine when it stops producing power, reducing the asymetric thrust problem. The Skymaster was created to take care of that problem by a design change.

It would be nice to see, but I don't think the enviorment supports it now. On the bright side, we have very unique aircraft and when I describe it to people, their eye's light up and they say in a positive way "Oh, you have one of those". Now, I just have to keep those pesky SIDs at bay.

Karl

Rick
 

Where did the $60,000 cost to perform the SID come from? Is that real or highly exaggerated? I am very seriously pursuing buying a Skymaster at this time. This SID has me stopped in my tracks. I could live with the "risk" of a 10 or 15 grand expense, but 60, whew!! I am trying to decide if I should run. The problem is that I really like the Skymaster and its performance. Nothing else out there comes close to matching it.

The cost estimates were arrived at by separate parties working independently. I believe they are accurate for the SIDs now under consideration and driven principally by the need to remove and inspect the wing attach bolts. Currently, such removal can be done safely only by separating not only the wings from the fuselage, but also the booms and tail, and derigging the aircraft. Cost won’t be significantly less unless the SIDs are changed or someone comes up with an alternate form of inspection such as X-ray.*

But Rick, if you are a U.S. Part 91 operator, I don’t believe you will be required to perform the SIDs.

I have been reading various comments on this Board about the possibility of an IA requiring the SIDs, either out of an abundance of caution or if Cessna issues a revised Service Manual with SIDs. While I can’t rule out a poorly informed IA taken such a stance, I think the record is clear that Part 91 operators will not have to do the SIDs.

My basis is the FAA’s Final Rule and Notices (“FRN”) on the matter, which is essentially the mandate for the SIDs. Later I will provide you a link so you may peruse the document, but here’s a summary.

The genesys of SIDs was the 1988 in-flight failure of a high-time Aloha Airlines Boeing 737, where a section of the upper fuselage ripped away because of fatigue. Congress pushed the FAA into evaluating steps that should be taken to prevent such future failures in high-time (or “aging”) aircraft. Initially only transport aircraft were considered but that was later expanded to cover smaller aircraft.

Both the heading and the first paragraph of the FRN make it clear that only Part 121, Part 129 and Part 135 operations are covered**. Moreover, on Page 5 (3rd full paragraph of the 3rd column) Part 135 cargo-only and on-demand operations are excluded.

Concerns that SIDs may become ADs also appear unfounded. On Page 2 (1st full paragraph of the 3rd column) the FAA explicitly states that ADs will be issued only to address “unsafe conditions that have already been identified.” And the Cessna 400-series SIDs supports this, because only one of the SIDs became an AD after cracks were found and a fatal in-flight failure occurred.

Given that SIDs were mandated by the FAA and the FRN’s clear intention to exclude Part 91 and some Part 135 operations, I do not believe Cessna can take actions that would essentially contravene the FAA.

All of this is small consolation to many non-commercial foreign operators who will be subject to the SIDs.

The FRN may be found at http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2002/pdf/02-30111.pdf.

Ernie

__________________
* I did some of the initial SID work for SOAPA and coordinated extensively with Don Nieser and others outside SOAPA regarding the effect of the SIDs. I have a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Caltech, 30 years of experience in aerospace and aviation, and have owned 2 Skymasters over the past 10 years.

** Although not pertinent to Skymasters, SIDs apply only to multiengine Part 129 and 135 operations, so single-engine airplanes are not subject to SIDs unless in Part 121 operations. I mention this because I have seen some arguments that the Skymaster SIDs are precursors to Cessna trying to extend them to its single-engine models.

Rick
 

Thanks Ernie. That was a very thorough reply to my concerns. I talked to Don Nieser on the phone yesterday. He gave me some good technical insite into the SID specifics and the lack of substantial evidence that any real problem exists. I would hope that the FAA would require something concrete before they would take any action in the AD direction.
Thanks again

PS By the way, this is a great group of folks on this forum.

Perhaps Cessna should just "buy back" the remaining Skymasters still out there....just like Beachcraft did with the Starship. Or perhaps the wing mounts are just fine...until they start falling out of the sky. As I remember, the entire 337 lacks zinc-chromate, except the wing mounts. So, why would Cessna all of a sudden be worried about corrosion?

Another Response
 

Larry, I maintain a website called www.conquestowners.org and one of our primary goals is stopping Cessna SIDS. On the 441's they cost around $100,000 per plane. It did not make the airplane any safer, they did not find any "smoking gun" hiding in the airframe, it did nothing for owners of the aircraft but cost money, devalue the airplanes, and take away 6 weeks of down time. There are a few legal groups kicking around the idea of a class action lawsuit against Cessna for creating SIDs, but from what we learned through the FAA is SID's are not mandatory. They carry no more weight of enforcement than a Service Bulletin.

I would like to discuss the SID issue more, so that owners of 337's are not taken advantage of by Cessna service centers and having to buy loads of Cessna parts. The 441 SID program caused a one year sales spike of $14,000,000 dollars of part sales for Cessna that otherwise would not have taken place. They love SIDs, it's thier way of making money off old airplanes. And it is thier hope that they can remove some old airplanes off the market so that you buy new airplanes. Or they want to make old airplanes so expensive to own, future buyers opt for the factory new model.

Rumor has it that the early Citation 500's are in line for it next, as are 421s.

-Jason

Only the military aircraft were zinc chromate'd (I think Reims did theirs also), Cessna was cheap.

Detected corrosion could, in most cases, indicate potential metal fatigue. The typical corrosion program is initiated to visually detect the possibility of future issues. That is why the CPCP program, if initiated, will eliminate the need to perform the SIDs on an calendar time frame and only require the SIDs on a hourly time frame.

But it's really a non-issue for Part 91 operators because we won't be required to comply in the USA unless further action is taken by the FAA.

Herb,

Since I'm a part 91 operator, I should not have a problem. I tend to be cautious; can any type of inspection be done with out the wing removal? Just to see if there is a potential problem.

Karl

This is where the CPCP (corrosion program) comes to play. These CPCP inspections are visual and are designed to detect a potential issue before it happens. Again, these inspections will not affect you but may give us some useful tools to perform on our own as a PM program.

So I was looking thru AC 43.13-1B "Acceptable Methods, Techniques, and Practices. It states that Eddy current inspections can be used to find corrosion. So I wonder why the big wing removal?

Cessna believes that each aircraft need to have an extensive inspection in these areas because of the age of the fleet and no history of corrosion program. The engineers have tried to develop an alternate method of inspecting the wing and strut attach points without removing the bolts but this effort has not yielded another process other than eddy current. The only way to achieve positive results with the eddy current in these specific areas is to remove the bolts. The SID inspection is detecting cracks and signs of metal fatigue where the corrosion inspection is a visual inspection.

From Flying e-letter
 

After reading Mac's opinion on aircraft manufactures support I have to decide how I will post a comment. I don't know if I can agree with him concerning the charge for services, of an item that a company produces, based on the items age. If Beech produced the product and sold it with no limitations then they should at the least provide customer service for this item. Think about our situation with the potential SID documents, there are some similarities here. Revenue. Take a look at the story below.


Left Seat
By J. Mac McClellan

The Economic Life of Airplanes
Airplanes, particularly in general aviation, are living longer than anyone could have imagined 40 or 50 years ago. To most of us, an A36 Bonanza, for example, built in 1970 is still a perfectly good and useful airplane. And there are many airplanes, particularly piston singles, still regularly flown that were built a decade or two before 1970.

For some reason when it comes to airplanes we count time in dog years. The 1970s, or 80s seem like yesterday when assessing the age of an airplane. But do the math. We're talking 30 to 40 years ago. If an airplane were any other type of vehicle, it would be enshrined in a museum by that age, or at least awarded historic license plates by the owner's state DMV.

But airplanes cannot continue to live forever without significant economic investment in their longevity. Hawker Beechcraft reminded us once again of the high cost of keeping airplanes airworthy when it announced a new plan to charge for technical support of airplanes it built many years ago. Now when you call the Hawker Beech technical support people with questions on part numbers, service instructions, serial number searches and so on you will have to pay for that information that had been previously provided at no charge for an airplane of any age. The new policy applies to airplanes that have been out of production for nearly 30 years, such as the V-tail Bonanza series and the Musketeer family, but also to older airplanes even though the models are still in production such as the King Air 90 and 200.

Since my Baron 58 has a serial number low enough to fall into the "legacy" category for which technical support charges will be made, I expect to possibly feel some financial pain in the future. But I do understand the position all of the manufacturers are in when it comes to support, whether they build airplanes, or the engines, avionics and accessories it takes to make the airplanes fly. The manufacturer sold the airplane or component many years ago and earned some level of profit then, but the revenue stream has dried up. It costs a great deal of money to keep the technical experts employed to provide the necessary support and that money has to come from somewhere.

There is, of course, profit in selling spare parts, but why should an airplane owner who needs no technical assistance, just a replacement part, pay for the staff who is researching information for other owners? I think the new Hawker Beech support policy for older airplanes is logical and fair, and I wouldn't be surprised to see other aviation product manufacturers follow the lead. Hawker Beech is doing the right thing by not cutting back on support, or walking away from its legacy airplanes, but is simply asking owners of older airplanes to pay for their upkeep. Our airplanes really can live almost forever, as long as we are willing to spend the money it takes to keep them in airworthy condition.

I think the metal airplanes from the 60's will out last the newer composite airplanes that do have a mandatory service life. The important thing about metal airplanes is not how old it is but how many hours are on the airframe. Right now there are Cessna 172's with 20,000 hours. I think Skymasters average around 3,000-4,000hrs. So I think the Skymasters will be around for a long while.