This is quite “interesting” 
Does Poland (SP-) have anything like G-INFO, so one could look up whether the reg is real?
Could this plane have got onto the Polish reg, without an EASA TC, in 2008? Maybe due to oversight by the Polish CAA inspector?
It does look like it might be at best in a regulatory no-mans-land, unless kept on the SP-reg.
A very quick and dirty google on the reg – example – suggests it possibly never left Poland which, if true, is also indicative… a lot of planes are flown only locally, for a variety of reasons not unrelated to the present discussion.
OTOH, if a national CAA registers a plane despite it not having a Type Certificate for that country, the owner is entitled to rely on that i.e. the CAA is not able to cancel the registration (without paying compensation). That would be the legal position in the UK, YMMV… @bart might know more.
It is also possible that such a plane would not have an ICAO CofA which means it cannot fly freely internationally; at best it would be a “homebuilt” sort of scenario. And it is obvious that whoever bought it and clocked up the massive hours in it, didn’t buy it for international flying.
All M20 Mooneys are on the same FAA TC…2A3 from the M20 through the alphabet to TN.
Why would EASA treat the Acclaim any differently?
I think it is also the aircraft that triggered FAA AD 2012-05-09 after it almost crashed due to a failure in the empennage section.
That was a quite good piece of flying. It did not damage the airframe at all though, so while it was the trigger for this AD, the incident should not have an impact on the sales potential of this plane. I don’t think it even did any damage at all. Obviously, the tail had to be inspected and was taken off as a result and later on mounted properly.
What is the details behind this AD – and what is the potential problem for this aircraft?
The tail of the Mooney is attached via a rather simple assembly, which allows the the whole empenage to rotate around an attachment point. If you move the trim, the whole empenage will move. It is a highly effective and proven system. But unfortunately, in the several thousand planes which all have the same assembly, it was mounted wrongly on about 3 airplanes, only one of them had a problem.
I had this checked even when it was a service bulletin, not yet an AD. The compliance to the AD takes all but two minutes. You open a hatch, check that the assembly is correct and close it.
That picture looks scary. Text says two pilots forces were needed to push it down when this happened at 200agl. I can’t see any reason to push. Only rescue must have been changing engine RPM. Good job…
It was for sale in 2012 with 1600h so it has done plenty of hours since.
Can the registration tie downs indicate that it has been stored outside?
What is scary about it? That is the attachment assembly of the empennage of my Mooney when we did the Service Bulletin (before it became an ad) on my plane. They all look like this.
The incident itself was scary enough, but as ALL Mooney models have this assembly since 1960 to this day, it is a very proven design. During the application of the AD, very few were found which had it mounted wrongly spread over almost 60 years of manufacturing. Only one of those had actually failed in this airplane. There were even E’s which had flown with that fault for over 50 years.
In any event, it was one of those AD’s where the application was dead easy and consequently cheap. Even rectification for those who needed it was not a big deal, about two days downtime if I remember right.
Just ask the seller. If so, and you’re in the market for this plane, you’ll have some additional ammo during the negotiations.
I agree that the empennage attachement was probably fixed with the oversight of the factory and it should be no factor.
It has no EASA TCDS and I didn’t find it in the EASA SAS (special airwothiness status) aircraft list.
And it doesn’t meet the criterias to be classified as Annex II aircraft.
How it got it’s SP-reg remains a mistery to me.
If you guys are searching for TCDS on the EASA website below it seems it only goes back to those that were certified after 2004 model years or where the manufacturer has somehow renewed their TCDS paperwork. Most likely this Mooney (sharing the same FAA TC number), was certified in the 60’s and is in the database, just not published or searchable. There are tons of types you can’t find in that list that I know for a fact are certified, like Turbo Commanders, MU-2’s, early Citations etc.
Guillaume wrote:
It has no EASA TCDS
Lots of aircraft have no EASA TC. E.g. Cessna 172s up to the “P” model don’t — and they certainly are not Annex II aircraft. Likewise, Cherokee Archers up to the “II” variant don’t have an EASA TC.
I don’t know what the criteria are for having an EASA TC but not having one doesn’t prevent aircraft from being on an EASA register.
