The TBO change to 2600 hrs applies only to factory new or factory rebuilt engines (not to overhauls by anybody), does not change the 12 year calendar time TBO requirement (therefore meaning 216 hrs per year) and regardless, Lycoming TBO on an engine and calendar time basis is a recommendation only for most owners and engines that are in private use.
The SB makes zero difference to almost anybody who isn’t running a flight school or similar commercial operation, using only Lycoming in-house factory produced engines/overhauls.
I’m not sure it makes much of a difference to a flight school. First up there’s is a 9 month wait for a factory new O-320 and then there’s the 75K bill.
I still subscribe to the practice of buy new and then overhaul twice. And the overhauled engine the TBO is still only 2000 hours.
Although you can get 2200 if you use all Lycoming parts etc.
Silvaire wrote:
The SB makes zero difference to almost anybody who isn’t running a flight school or similar commercial operation, using only Lycoming in-house factory produced engines/overhauls.
In EASA-land, not even flight schools are affected if they are run by a non-profit club as they are considered noncommercial ops and already could run engines past TBO.
Airborne_Again wrote:
In EASA-land, not even flight schools are affected if they are run by a non-profit club as they are considered noncommercial ops and already could run engines past TBO.
One has to wonder if this was intentionally, or just is a thing that sort of “happened”. For a student pilot doing his first solo, wondering if the technical condition of the plane is as good/safe as it could have been, is not something he should think about. The same goes for the instructor supervising the solo flight. In other words, why is it that a for-profit school warrants a “higher standard” than a non-profit school? The end result is exactly the same: a new Private Pilot License. The setting is exactly the same (instructor – student). The instructor probably get payed exactly the same, so it’s not exactly non-profit either when looking at the details.
LeSving wrote:
One has to wonder if this was intentionally, or just is a thing that sort of “happened”.
It is explicitly spelled out in part-M/ML, and also criteria is given for when an ATO/DTO is non-commercial, so it is certainly intentional. Check out ML.201 and its guidance material, which would also apply in Norway.
Of course some CAAs dislike this (as always when EASA introduces rules less strict than previous national rules). Apparently there was some infighting between different sections within the Swedish CAA when this regulation was introduced with one faction claiming that the regulation couldn’t be applied as flight schools were by definition commercial! (At this point the guidance material with criteria for non-commercial schools had not yet been published.) In the end reason prevailed.
Formally, the way you can run an engine arbitrarily past TBO is using an owner-declared maintenance programme.
I owned several examples of the TIO-540-AE2A in the past. Those engines are not covered by those extended TBOs. But my point is that the claimed 2000hs TBO on this Lycoming engine was totally fictional anyway. They could raise to a million hours but what is the point if essentially no engine makes it to there without major work? They just say bad luck and charge you. If they are really so confident about their engines, why is there no full warranty all the way to TBO? That is the one and only move which would really impress me.
