UK Continued airworthiness testing - RIP?

[Genghis the Engineer]

I hear rumours that EASA is dictating (or at-least encouraging) an end to UK-CAA/FT dept's long-term programme of continued airworthiness flight testing of the G-reg fleet.

If true, this strikes me as a rather retrograde step, but my sources of information are somewhat vague. Can anybody shed light on this (or tell me that I'm misinformed)?.

G

[Shawn Coyle]

I've never been directly involved with the CAA annual airworthiness air tests, but I wondered if there was any evidence, one way or the other, of the effectiveness of these tests.
Did lots of aircraft fail? Did any exceed the requirements to the point where extra payload could be justified and approved?

['India-Mike]

Genghis

Do you mean the triennial Cof A renewal flight test? If so, and if EASA want to ditch it, will the Permit-to-fly types follow? If not, why not - why should they have to demonstrate more than a C of A aircraft?

I'm playing devil's advocate. However, I do know of one aircraft that failed the rate-of-climb requirement recently - would it 'escape' under the proposed regime?

[BizJetJock]

I haven't heard of it being abolished, but it would definitely be a retrograde step. Many things (often minor) are only picked on an air test. The most extreme I've had was a snag that turned out to have been there from the factory - on a 30 year old aeroplane!!

[steve_oc]

CAA have confirmed that the 3-yearly continued airworthiness flights are no longer required, nor are the initial C of A flights if you import a new aircraft from another EASA country or a country with a bilateral (eg USA).

However....EASA aircraft will still require an airworthiness approval, and it remains to be clarified exactly what, if any, flight testing will be required. Watch this space!

On the issue of pass/fail, it varies significantly with the type. The Puma varieties tend to pass the perf climbs without difficulty, and the only snags we've found are age-related or minor. The older and smaller types (61, 365 and 76) tend to have difficulty passing the height climbs, although I guess that problem would go away if we didn't have to use gross performance. There are other issues with power assurance as all 76 Arriel operators will know.

I think as a company we will still maintain some form of continued testing for our own benefit, but we will wait for the moment and see what further info comes out of EASA/CAA.

Cheers
Steve

[Rivet gun]

Hi,

Do you know if this applies to light aircraft only or to heavy aircraft as well. Big aeroplanes were air tested on a fleet sample basis, not individually. Willl this continue? Will there be a fleet sample program for light aircraft types?

I have in the past picked up several snags that would not normally be apparant on the line including failed engine response (slam) test.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Presumably the fact that this letter was written about 10 days after my post is co-incidental, but it would be nice to think that PPrune is that influentual.

As I understand it the executive summary is "no change, until EASA actually make their mind up what they want".

Also I note that nothing in EASA's existence has yet caused the "plain english campaign" to make their presence known at Gatwick yet, although I've seen worse.

G

http://www.planetjitsu.com/modules/gallery/albums/Aviation/CAA1.jpg

http://www.planetjitsu.com/modules/gallery/albums/Aviation/CAA2.jpg