COPA opposes NTSB Ad proposal

The United States National Transportation Safety Board has recently recommended to the FAA that an Airworthiness Directive be issued against Cessna 170, 180, 185, 190 and 195 aircraft – all the four-place, sprung steel-geared taildraggers that Cessna has produced. The AD is a reaction to a recent ground accident and would likely require the removal of the gear legs from the aircraft, removal of the wheel and axles from the gear legs followed by non-destructive testing of the landing gear. It is proposed that this action be carried out on each aircraft affected and then repeated every 100 hours of flying time. The estimated cost per Canadian aircraft affected would be approximately $1,000 for each inspection every 100 hours.
COPA staff member Adam Hunt responded to the FAA on this proposed AD. In part his letter to the FAA said: “This NTSB-proposed AD would affect some 76,000 aircraft in the U.S. and 1,736 aircraft in Canada. By the NTSB’s own statistics there have been only 16 incidents of this type in recorded history. This represents an approximate occurrence risk rate of 0.0004 per cent per aircraft per year for the U.S. The potential cost of this AD would be close to $78 million per year for the U.S. and Canada combined. It is anticipated that the expense would result in the scrapping of many of the affected aircraft. Given these numbers, the extremely high cost cannot be justified, with this very low occurrence rate and risk. A further mitigating factor is that the failure of this main landing gear leg, at either potential failure point, is unlikely to create a catastrophic accident, as demonstrated by the accident that precipitated the NTSB recommendation in the first place. This accident resulted in only minor injuries.”
It is clear that the risks do not justify the costs in this proposed AD. It is hoped that, based on the input from COPA and other aviation organizations, the FAA will decide not to issue an AD on these Cessna aircraft.