This is what I operate (even for work done by myself and my A&P) but I wonder who else does it?
A maintenance company I used to use would not allow any of their people to fly in the plane 
Obviously with line maintenance on jets you don’t do any such thing. You fly it as normal once it is signed off.
Peter wrote:
This is what I operate (even for work done by myself and my A&P) but I wonder who else does it?
I decided to keep such a policy of flying to Rakovnik last year (almost) immediately after the annual and getting a nice splash of oil on the windscreen due to an improperly placed seal.
A maintenance company I used to use would not allow any of their people to fly in the plane
I think my mechanic has such a policy, too. 
Doing all by myself, my post-maintenance flights consist of gradually widening circles around the field. After intensive works, I will first make a short hop off the runway and land back immediately – it is nice to operate a STOL-like plane from a longish runway (a full 600 m!) After a number of circuits I will fly to the next field, some 15 minutes, and back again, after which my mechanic half signs off the work to my pilot/owner half. Which does not make the pilot/owner blindly believe everything is surely ok with no room for doubt, not at all.
@Peter: how do your self-imposed limitations wear off? I mean, you are not stopping over-water flying forever after maintenance, are you?
Peter wrote:
You fly it as normal once it is signed off.
Yes. Unless the works performed require a post-maintenace flight. On which I insist to take one of the mechanics along (officially because he needs to record some parameters…). So far they never objected. With the SEPs and MEPs of the flying school I do “business as usual” after maintenance. Put a student or two on board and go flying. Of course the pre-flight inspection will be a little bit more thorough than on normal days.
Peter wrote:
A maintenance company I used to use would not allow any of their people to fly in the plane
That would be all I need to change maintenance company…
If it is not safe enough for them why should I trust them???
It depends on the work done.
If the work could have a disastrous outcome (like I recently had to replace the elevator spar) then I always do a test flight.
If it’s not safety critical (like I recently had a valve replaced on the vacuum system, where my primary AI is electric) then I won’t worry.
How long do you wait to go over water? How many flights &/or hours?
How long do you wait to go over water? How many flights &/or hours?
One flight.
If it’s not safety critical (like I recently had a valve replaced on the vacuum system, where my primary AI is electric) then I won’t worry.
However, one can never be sure about what else may have been “touched”. For example, after some work I had done behind the panel (the TCAS installation) I was about to take off into the evening, and found the instrument lights were defunct. Obviously I cancelled the flight. Had I been departing say 30 mins sooner I might not have tested them (who does?) and found myself with a mostly dark instrument panel… no altitude, no airspeed, no vertical speed, no attitude information. The outfit had pulled out a connector when working behind the panel… Subsequently, when installing a second EHSI on the RHS I had the brightness control for that EHSI wired not to the main instrument lighting bus (which is a single point of failure) but to a standalone potentiometer (knob), and with the ex-AHRS AI mode on that, I would have at least an AI.
It’s easy to end up in a rather dire situation, easily… I do carry a head-mounted torch but it’s hardly ideal.
But there must be a scale of acceptableness. What if a rear seatbelt had been replaced? Or (reductio ad absurdum) the battery replaced in a rear headset, or database replaced in GPS?
Our TMG had its engine overhauled last year and it was returned and installed shortly before Christmas. I then flew it half an hour close to the airport at different lever positions and observed what could be observed. On the next flight I flew a 1-hour local flight away from the airport, but always within easy reach of reasonable off-airport landing sites.Then we inspected the engine, found nothing that was not spotless, and “declared” it “released” to the syndicate, and a fellow pilot flew a short local trip just before sunset, while I drove home. When I got home he called me and said the engine had failed close to the airport but not close enough, and had landed in a field and the TMG momentarily stood on its nose because the field had been a little soft, as most fields were in December whenever they were not frozen.
The next morning I put on rubber boots and met in the field with the pilot and an AAIB representative. We scraped the mud off the prop and spinner and started the engine without problems. When we switched off the electric fuel pump, the engine lost power and stopped after a short while.
It turned out that the newly installed mechanical fuel pump had been installed incorrectly, using incorrect parts, and it did not produce enough fuel pressure to keep the engine running. When I had flown the plane, the fuel level had been high enough in the tank so that very little pumping was required to feed the engine. As the fellow pilot took over the plane, it seems that the fuel level had lowered just enough that the pump pressure was insufficient to keep the engine running. The poor soul had been at a rather low altitude, busy talking to talking to ATC, looking for other aircraft, and trying to remember cockpit-flow-procedures in a plane had had not flown for some time, and forgot to switch on the electric pump. He kicked his own behind for that afterwards – however, his landing had been good, and in the end no damage was found other that a slightly bent wheel fairing.
I guess this just confirms that on the third flight after overhaul you are still on the high part of the failure rate curve.
