“SIDS compulsory because of CASA Regulatory Structure?”
 

Interesting article in The Australian newspaper this morning, “Inspection Edict Tearing Light Aircraft Apart” - see article reproduced below - particularly the comment by Jeff Boyd that, “it was not the original deliberate intention to make SIDS compulsory, but it ended up so because of the regulatory structure.”

This seems very strange. Perhaps Cream Puff or someone with expertise in the regulatory system can explain why this was so. Surely CASA can bring in advisory material just like the FAA?

Article as follows…

Inspection edict ‘tearing light aircraft apart’



In general aviation circles they’re calling it SIDS — and it’s leaving the carcasses of light aircraft, some with their engines gone, some with tails and wings amputated, strewn around regional *airports.


SIDS stands for Supplementary Inspection Documents, and according to Tony Brand, who runs light aircraft repair and maintenance company Horsham Aviation Services in western *Victoria, it’s killing the industry.


The Civil Aviation Safety Authority is enforcing a program initiated by the large US light *aircraft manufacturer Cessna of *special inspections of its older aircraft to check for problems like corrosion, wear, cracks, and other mechanical risks.


In Australia, Mr Brand said, that covers 3800 Cessna aircraft, and $285 million in additional compliance work.


“There was no industry consultation for this,” he said.


For Mr Brand SIDS means boom times, with his 11 aircraft mechanics including two apprentices working flat-out on aircraft flown in from all around the *country.


“I could put on another five people tomorrow and still not keep up with the work,” he said.


But his concern is that SIDS will financially cripple many of his customers. “It’s driving people out of the general aviation industry one after the other,” Mr Brand said.


“They have just got it so wrong you wouldn’t believe.”


Flying school operators who spoke with The Australian this week all complained about SIDS.


“I had to take one plane *completely apart then put it back together again and it cost me $30,000,” said Ray Clamback, who runs a flying school at Sydney’s Bankstown airport.


“It turned out there was nothing wrong with it.”


Mr Brand said the cost of SIDS was leading some aircraft owners to sell their planes overseas in countries such as the US where the program initiated by Cessna is not mandatory as it is here, but voluntary.


Other older aircraft are just not worth taking abroad, and those are being cannabilised for parts, explaining the carcasses.


CASA chairman Jeff Boyd said it was not the original deliberate intention to make SIDS compulsory, but it ended up so because of the regulatory structure.


“It just got caught up in the way our regulations are written,” Mr Boyd said.


He nonetheless defended the compulsory nature of the *program here, saying it was essential to deal with a real safety issue.


Mr Boyd, a licensed aircraft mechanical engineer and former regional airline owner, said he had done the SIDS exercise *himself on the 1977 Cessna 172XP he owns and flies.


He used it as an opportunity to fully renovate the aircraft.


Mr Brand is scathing of the people he describes as technocrats at CASA who have “not worked a day in general aviation, in the hangar.”


But Mr Brand has nothing but praise for Mr Boyd who has worked in the hangar, and still does from time to time as a *consultant, such as oversighting maintenance for the Thai military.


Mr Boyd, Mr Brand said, was bringing some much needed real world private sector sense to those technocrats.


“He’s been doing an excellent job,” he said.

Folks,
A further comment on the above, Jeff has certainly got it right.

Instead of the sensible approach of graded maintenance in US, our "one size fits all" is about to hit GA for another six with Part 135, which, at this stage, will require all "Air Transport" aircraft be maintained with all the hoopla of an RPT A380.

The only reason this cost and complexity disaster hasn't hit us yet is an exemption instrument that temporally limits the "new" maintenance regulations to RPT.

Repeal the exemption, and WWAMMO!!

I guess "regulating" GA out of the sky is one way of "improving" our lamentable safety record, compared with USA.

Do you think this new CASA board will act on the rather obvious, that the "regulations" are the problem, not the answer.

Tootle pip!!

PS: Mind you, maybe future maintenance costs won't matter "all that much", because Part 135 aerodrome standards are going to eliminate most light aircraft charter, anyway.

But does Mr Boyd (1) consider the regulatory structure to be wrong, (2) have sufficient influence to change the regulatory structure, and (3) have the inclination and sufficient energy and support to get the regulatory structure changed?

If the answer to any of those questions is no, his views are interesting but irrelevant.

Omg leadie do you always talk to yourself.
Problem is this aircraft are all getting old. And without making it mandatory people like your self will not do it.
Once we done 100 and major inspections. At the major we took controls off had a good look around. Now we don't do these inspectors. As with the aircraft I just done we done croaked and worn fittings. With out sids program we would not have been able to look at these areas. At the end of the day it's not the maintenance org that's the problem. It's the owners problem that don't allow a proper look and complain about their bills. Hence with the with now ADs that we had that made certain things mandatory that now arnt no wonder Casa made SIDS mandatory. At the end of the day yes it expensive but Cessna do not wont these aircraft in the air anymore. They making it as hard as possible not Casa not the maintenance org and certainly not the lame.

the great CAsA concern is that ageing aluminium aircraft will fall out of the sky.

the reality is that only 3 designs have had structural breakups in the air.
the tiger moth predates design standards and is a time honoured design.
the other two designs that broke up were caused by the regulator's incompetence.
the pzl dromadier was approved for increased weight for water bombing.
the aerocommander was approved for increased weight because..., just because.

both of those designs have shed wings in flight in turbulence.

the old cessna you would think would be a candidate for in flight breakups.
...but I don't know of any.

the fluffy headed "we know safety" nutters in CAsA are totally off the planet on this one. they have prevented owners from carrying out maintenance on privately owned cessna's and now the remedial SIDS is the result.

CAsA are utter nutters. THEY are the cause of the problem.

If CAsA had any intellect at all what should happen are 3 things.
1. introduce Canadian owner maintenance for private owners.
2. allow for the decertification of privately owned commercially built aircraft
3. introduce an experimental - amateur maintenance category of registration for any privately owned aircraft.

because of the deeply entrenched nutter mentality of the place I'll bet they won't.

If I owned a Cessna I'd be suing the arse off CAsA for preventing effective owner maintenance.

Tony Brand is a good LAME and a good guy. :ok:

He also did one of those unapproved courses. :ooh:

Yr Right has some points, valid and invalid.

Cessna have not made SIDS mandatory....from the manufacturer, its HIGHLY reccomended. CASA have made it mandatory.

Owners won't pay to have inspections/repairs done...big fooey.
I work in the auto industry.
Big difference you say....dam right there is, and you have more power than I do, but all you LAME's are the same.

I get a service in, I do the work and the inspections. If an owner decides they do not wish needed work done, then I note it on the invoice for the client to acknowledge the item. I also do not release the car until I have been paid.
This is where LAME's have a tool that I don't. YOU HAVE TO SIGN for the aeroplane to be returned to flight.
Too many of you sign simply so you get paid, and most of you release without being paid...in the hope the cheque is really in the mail.

The pay rates for tradies in the AME business are crap, and very disporportinate to the end bills.

____________________________________________


Mr Boyd states that he took the opportunity to completley refurbish his aeroplane.

The SIDS is so invasive, that a refurbished aeroplane is what comes out the other side. :ugh:

Some of you should have seen the cracks in the C172 elevator on the aircraft I had just done 16 hrs in. I was not impressed.

D8 is wrong, well nearly so.

SIDS came about because a C402 landed in the US with the pilot complaining that he had run out of aileron trim to keep it level. The aircraft was high time (> 20,000 hrs from memory) and had been used on a short sector low-capacity RPT run (lots of pax & bag weight). On inspection the aircraft was found to have a cracked spar. It was well on its way to an in-flight break-up.

It was then that Cessna came to the decision that their aircraft were being used far more than the original design envisaged and that if they were to be kept airworthy then something more than the run-of-the-mill inspections were required.

I have seen what SIDS have uncovered by way of unseen corrosion on C310 and C206 aircraft. I have also heard about what has been uncovered on C172 aircraft, a design that was believed would have very few problems. Yes, SIDS is expensive and no, it doesn't had the equivalent value to the aircraft, but if we wish to continue to operate ageing aircraft it would seem to be a responsible decision.

I accept your point plovett.

however I see the other side of the experience.
take my mate freddoh and his little vintage cessna 150.
it was rebuilt by a victorian LAME out of two aircraft one a crashed fuselage and one a crashed wing. the undamaged bits were married into one aircraft.
the aircraft is still the only cessna I've flown that has no need for control trim tabs it is such a straight airframe.
lived all its life in a hangar.
I don't believe it needs a sids teardown.
it is totally uneconomic to do the program and as a result a perfectly serviceable cessna will end up being scrapped.

I'd take the aeroplane out and fly it now.
I have a pretty good idea what it is like inside.
I've done work on it.

another cessna 150 I know of is sitting in a hangar somewhere in the eastern states.
it has a total of 300 hours on it.
the owner has had medical problems for decades evidently.
the sids cost will probably see it scrapped eventually.

hang your heads in shame CAsA.

doublueight,
The Aero Commander problem was a design/manufacturing flaw (actually several) and not related to the increased gross weight for some AC500 models in Australia.

Sadly, Aero Commander shed wings in NZ, US and elsewhere. There is an excellent article of the subject by Steve Swift (ex CAA/CASA) which you will probably find on Google.

Since that article, there have been two more in flight breakups in Australia, neither related to the above flaws, but still related to the basic design. In these two referred, the wings failed in downward bending, outboard of the engines, not at the wing root.

None of the above are "aging aircraft" problems. Indeed, at least one failure was at quite low hours, don't quote me, but about 3700 hours.

What a wonderful thing it would be to have the Canadian system here, there was a move to do so in 1997, the objections of the likes of yr wrong and the CAR 30 Workshop holders plus AWIs ( described at the time as "opposed by industry and CASA safety experts) killed it.

yr wrong,
You are just a dill, you would not have a clue what my attitude to the Cessna SIDs are, or what my experience on the subject might be.

Tootle pip!!

about the time that allan bond won the america's cup ( so about 1982) the guy opposite me in the office asked what an aeroplane cost.
I didn't know.
his reply was that I had a phone beside me, find out.
I rang Transwest at jandakot. they were the cessna agents at the time.
a Cessna 152 cost $250,000.

yes, a quarter of a million dollars for a 2 seat aeroplane that wasn't even corrosion proofed.

there in lies the problem. as a private owner you can't amortise the cost against your income.

to get this in perspective I built my home in perth about 4 years previous to the phone call. the total cost of a new brick and tile home on a 650 square metre block was under $35,000.

the poor bugger with the 300 hour cessna 150 I take my hat off to.
he has fought cancer for years I was told.
to him that little cessna is an investment approaching a quarter of a million dollars.
its current value was probably $25,000 to $30,000 before sids.
its value now is probably the weight in scrap aluminium.

just consider for a moment what that poor guy has lost.

of course the clueless in CAsA have no idea of the tragedies their fckuwitted approach to safety has caused.
none of them ever owned aircraft during their working lives.
none of them ever put a dollar of their own money toward what they flew.
they don't have a bloody clue and my gods does it show.

hang your heads in shame CAsA.

By George you are lucky to still be with us!

What did the owner say when you returned his aircraft with all those cracks after 16 hours of your botched landings?

What relevance do cracks in elevators have to SIDS, Sunfish?

W8, in 1983 bank rates were 25% for short term loans and similar for 90 day bills and property was moving at record pace. $250K for a C150 seems wrong but believable, however and perhaps Gaunty, who did some time at Rex Aviation, (the Cessna dealers not the airline), could probably tell you what they were worth in 1970. I don't believe they were 10 times the average wage. In which case one new then and still flying probably represents good value. I do recall the Kiwi's buying all the OZ 152's and on-selling them back to the Yanks, but that's another story. Whatever, the SIDS can't be measured as part of the value if it can only be recouped in Australia.

Guessing your pre-flight inspections need a bit more attention to detail...

:ugh:

Manufacturers list price in 1982 was as follows ........

152 US$24,300
152 II US$30,000
152 Trainer US$31,680
152 Aerobat US$32,400

Corrosion proofing was a US$1,675 option

Jaz24zzk,
That is only partially correct, and CASA did nothing "special". The Cessna SID is certainly a requirement (mandatory) for any aircraft used in Part 135 ( roughly charter) in USA.

Cessna made the SID part of the Cessna MM for various aircraft, and Australian maintenance rules do not differentiate between categories of operation, so owners/operators of aircraft all are stuck with the requirement.

US rules do not take the "one size fits all" approach of Australia, to the long standing relief of private owners in the US.

Tootle pip!!

Cracks in elevator torque tube were not visible until the elevator skin was removed

Jeez Sunny,
you mean you have to peel the aircraft during SID,s??