This made for a really interesting and unexpected read to me: link
Based on my reading of the FAA legal interpretation, the option for compliance with airworthiness limitations revised after the date of aircraft/component manufacture rests with the Part 91 operator unless mandated by an AD or some other rulemaking action. Therefore, the Part 91 operator could decide not to follow a more restrictive airworthiness limitation if that limitation became incorporated in a revision of a manufacturer’s maintenance manual after the date of manufacture of the aircraft/component.
This makes perfect sense. It is worth remembering that the limitations are not imposed by thr FAA originally, but are set out by the manufacturer and approved by the FAA. Of course some of them may be necessary to meet certain criteria or mandatory for approval, but that doesn”t change this basic fact.
When the original limitations were in force, the FAA deemed the aircraft perfectly safe with only these limitations. The manufacturer does not have the power to retroactively impose something on the owner unless the FAA deems this necessary for safety reasons and issues an AD to that effect.
Overall – for Part 91, the manufacturer has no power to force the owner/operator to do anything, only the FAA has. And this is as it should be, anything else would be a licence to print money and open to abuse.
The FAA also does not require the TC holder to be “alive” to enable the aircraft to be flown – this is probably a part of the same thing, and is a big difference to Europe.
Otherwise, a TC holder could, among other options, sell his interest in the TC to another company which then proceeds to screw all the owners.
However, this isn’t so clear cut. What about the MU-2 case, and the Eclipse Jet?
Very interesting. Thank you.
PS My DAR friend comments “That is due to the 210 wing limit that Cessna tried to pull a few years ago. There was an article about it somewhere – Sport Aviation or AOPA?”
That said, I know nothing personally about the background to that comment.
I was very involved in the Cessna 210 spar cap cracking “fiasco” of a few years back.
Following reports from Austarlia and Africa, NONE in Europe and the US, of spar cap cracks, the FAA issued and emergency AD to inspect all wings for such cracks.
When the dust settled, it was very clear that the cracks were maintenance induced by a couple of mechanics in the field using very poor technique on the spar cap rivets.
At any rate, Cessna tried putting some limits on the wing life through SID in a new Maintenance Manual release.
The FAA legal dept. was called in and they ruled that it was not to be “mandatory” such as an AD.
