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Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) has extended the deadline for a series of inspections of Cessna 100 aircraft for a further two years.
The inspections, contained in Supplemental Inspection Documents (SID), were developed by Cessna and the US Federal Aviation Administration due to concerns that critical principal structural elements of the aircraft, including wing spars, wing attachment points, wing struts attachments as well as horizontal and vertical stabiliser attachment points, were susceptible to fatigue or corrosion damage.
CASA said some components had not been adequately inspected since the aircraft was manufactured decades ago.
The SID inspections now had to be completed by June 30 2018, CASA said in a statement on Thursday. The previous deadline was June 30 2016.
CASA director of aviation safety Mark Skidmore said owners and maintainers of these aircraft had indicated the original June 30 2016 completion date “was causing problems such as a backlog of work and ordering replacement components”.
“We have listened to feedback from both owners and maintainers about the need for extra time to complete SIDs on Cessna 100 series aircraft in private operations,” Skidmore said.
“The extra two years for SIDs completion will allow Cessna 100 series aircraft owners and maintainers to plan to spread out the work and the costs over a longer period with no unacceptable risks to safety.”
CASA said the extension was “subject to a number of conditions designed to ensure continuing safety of flight and progressive compliance with the SIDs requirements”.
“Cessna 100 series aircraft SIDs must begin at the next annual/100 hourly inspection after 30 June 2016 and a compliance plan must be submitted to CASA as revised log book statement,” CASA said.
“Aircraft principle structural elements must be inspected by a licensed engineer to ensure a satisfactory level of structural integrity is apparent in the airframe.
“This inspection either needs to have been done at the most recent periodic/100 hourly inspection or before 30 June 2016. If not completed by 30 June 2016 an inspection will be required before further flight after that date.”
CASA previously extended the deadline in April 2014. Further details can be found here.
