The Waddington Effect
In 1943, a British scientist named Conrad Hal (C.H.) Waddington made a remarkable discovery about aircraft maintenance. He was a most unlikely person to make this discovery, because he wasn’t an...
View ArticleDo Piston Engine TBOs Make Sense?
Last month, I discussed the pioneering work on Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM) done by United Airlines scientists Stan Nowlan and Howard Heap in the 1960s, and I bemoaned the fact that RCM has...
View ArticleHow Do Piston Aircraft Engines Fail?
Last month, I tried to make the case that piston aircraft engines should be overhauled strictly on-condition, not at some fixed TBO. If we’re going to do that, we need to understand how these engines...
View ArticleThe Dark Side of Maintenance
Have you ever put your airplane in the shop—perhaps for an annual inspection, a squawk, or a routine oil change—only to find when you fly it for the first time after maintenance that something that was...
View ArticlePrepping the long X-C
It is now one month before my annual summer airborne trek and, yes, preparation has already begun. In fact, my task list for these long summer outings starts a few months ahead, if you want to include...
View ArticleWhat Makes an Engine Airworthy?
If we’re going to disregard manufacturer’s TBO (as I have advocated in earlier blog posts), how do we assess whether a piston aircraft engine continues to be airworthy and when it’s time to do an...
View ArticleCarbon Monoxide, Silent Killer
On January 17, 1997, a Piper Dakota departed Farmingdale, New York, on a planned two-hour VFR flight to Saranac Lake, New York. The pilot was experienced and instrument-rated; his 71-year-old mother, a...
View ArticleChampion Aerospace: From Denial to Acceptance
According to the model popularized by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her seminal 1969 book On Death & Dying, there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance....
View ArticleIs Your Aircraft Okay to Fly?
Who decides whether or not your aircraft is airworthy? Earlier this year, I wrote an article titled “Fix It Now…Or Fix It Later” that was published in a major general aviation magazine. The article...
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