Hopefully they will follow the NTSB findings so it will be anything with higher wing loadings. So Arrows, Cherokee 6’s and Dakota’s (Dakota’s have fixed gear but bigger engines and tip tanks).
I’m guessing when they get data from hundreds/thousands of inspections the AD will be modified or go away.
I’m glad I did mine though – I can now worry about the Slick Mag SB1-19 on my 8 month old mags.
Bespoke AD is now in force. Affected aircraft must be inspected within one year or 100 hours.
Here is an example of an aircraft where it has been done already:
My club actually did the underlaying Piper SB voluntarily on a 1979 PA28-181 with just short of 10.000 hours on the airframe. For almost its whole life the aircraft had been flying in clubs with part instruction part rental.
When is EASA going to enforce this? I’d rather see they do it on the PA28 I fly sometimes before I have to fly it again.
I already got it on my latest MWR – to be performed before next 100 h or dec. 2021..
Peter wrote:
There seems to be some concession on this wing spar AD – here
Now I read the AD carefully. It doesn’t seem to be the “Embry-Riddle AD”. The present AD requires a visual corrosion inspection and not an eddy current crack inspection. Also, it doesn’t include Arrows.
As far as I can see this is a re-hash of a long forgotten Piper SB ( that the U.K. CAA made mandatory years back an got lost when EASA turned up ) and involves installation of inspection panels inboard between the front and rear spar.
Piper also has an SB for installation of inspection panels in the rear baggage area floor to enable inspection of the rear spar carry-thru area. I would recommend this as a few hours work enables easy inspection of a critical area and enables effective access for corrosion inhibitors to be applied.
Confusing times indeed. Now, the „other“ “PA28 AD“ (the one which was the primary aftermath to the Embry Riddle crash) is out. Actually it‘s PA28 and PA32s. Hershey bar fixed gear PA28s (except the -235s) are excluded. Plus there is that factored service hours calculation, which might become interesting in some cases. Will be interested to see what EASA makes of this FAA AD…
If the factored service hours reaches 5,000 or more, the AD requires an eddy current inspection of
the wing attachment for cracks. This eddy current inspection is both invasive and somewhat
expensive because it requires special test equipment and the services of a certified NDT
(non-destructive testing) technician. The reason the FAA came up with the rather oddball formula
for factored service hours is to ensure that most airplanes in for-hire service would be required
to perform this inspection and most personal-use airplanes would be spared. An airplane that spent
part of its life in for-hire ops and the rest of its life in personal-use ops might go either way.
