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Wing comes off a PA28 during a checkride with an examiner (and wing spar structure discussion)

Avweb article

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I sometimes charter an Arrow PA28-200-R and an Archer II.
I read about how the FAA uses the number of 100h inspections via some formula to establish wether a spar inspection will be mandatory or not.
Should there be any concern to fly PA28s for me? I’m thinking that the typical rental plane will undergo quite some abuse which might be detrimental to the spar.

always learning
LO__, Austria

Snoopy wrote:

Should there be any concern to fly PA28s for me?

I doubt it. If you look at the figures in the report, that airplane had 33,276 (!!!) landing cycles, 4.33 per hour ! I don’t think you’d see these figure outside the high-intensity training environment in places like FL.

Thanks. So given that this was an isolated event and is not happening to Pa28s every other week the probability is high that the cause of the spar malfunction was due to the amount of landings accumulated on this airframe.

Or could it be that only 100 very hard ones out of the 30000 plus landings could cause the spar to break?

always learning
LO__, Austria

A PA28 I’m flying often has over 10k hours and the other one over 14k hours. They both average around 3 landings per hour. It doesn’t sound much better than the accident aircraft… I’m getting worried and people don’t seem to take this occurrence serious enough. I hope the FAA issues a mandatory AD.

ESME, ESMS

My PA28 with nearly 10,000 hours passed the NDT of the outer bolts. The wing spar and all attachments are all in fantastic condition.

I would not worry too much, there are other risks which are far more important/real.

United Kingdom

As well as the number of landings/hours flown equation that the FAA produced, they did suggest that if one didn’t know the complete history of the wings one should have them tested.
Because of this, I had the spars checked on my PA28 – N2CL at the last Annual and was given the All Clear.

Rochester, UK, United Kingdom

Let’s hope EASA is quick with this.

“On 15 January 2021, the FAA issued AD 2020-26-16, applicable to certain Piper PA-28 and PA-32 series aeroplanes.

That AD requires calculating the factored service hours for each main wing spar to determine when inspection is required, a one-time inspection of the inner surface of the two lower outboard bolt holes on each lower main wing spar to detect cracks, and, depending on findings, replacing the cracked main wing spar.

Although EASA agrees with the need for inspection, EASA cannot apply a method of ‘factoring’ hours to determine when an inspection is required, as it could not be applied to flight hours as recorded for aircraft under EU regulation.

For the reason described above, EASA has decided not to adopt FAA AD 2020-26-16.

However, EASA plans to issue a Proposed AD to address the safety risk addressed by FAA AD 2020-26-16 for aeroplanes operating under EU regulation."

References:
https://ksak.se/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/EASA_AD_US-2020-26-16_2.pdf
https://ksak.se/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/FAA-2020-26-16.pdf
https://ksak.se/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/EASA_AD_US-2020-26-16_1-1.pdf

Local:
EASA_AD_US_2020_26_16_2_pdf
FAA_2020_26_16_pdf
EASA_AD_US_2020_26_16_1_1_pdf

Last Edited by Dimme at 24 Feb 13:49
ESME, ESMS

You can upload PDFs to EuroGA, btw, and that way they won’t go dead.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I know. But that means I have to download them first, which I might not always have time to do, e.g. on a phone. You could add a feature where EuroGA fetches them automatically, but then programmers cost money, etc etc. Let’s continue this conversation in a more appropriate thread.

ESME, ESMS
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