maintenance interval

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awash2002
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maintenance interval

Post by awash2002 »

When should I do scheduled maintenance or inspections on my Bonanza and what kind of shop should I take my Bonanza to for the inspections?
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TatoBean
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Re: maintenance interval

Post by TatoBean »

So real world the inspections you would do vary with what you use the airplane for. For just a private operator the only required inspection is every 12 calendar months. The annual inspection is basically open every single panel, inspect every single nut, bolt, surface, and structure, fix broken or worn parts, make sure all the systems work, and put it all back together again. It’s a little more detailed than that but that’s the basics.

Now if the airplane is operated commercially as in it makes money somehow, flight instructing, carrying paying passengers or cargo. Then there is the annual inspection plus a 100 hour inspection. The 100 hour is much like the annual but a few things are left out (I can’t remember them off the top of my head. But remember it this way “an annual counts as a 100 hour, but a 100 hour is not an annual.”)

Other than that you’re obviously going to find things on preflight inspections, you’ll need oil changes every so often, you’ll notice parts wearing out. But there’s tons of places scattered across the country that can do these inspections.

Disclaimer this is for US registered airplanes. I don’t have a clue what other countries do.
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AKar
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Re: maintenance interval

Post by AKar »

Under EASA, you'd basically write and get an approval for an aircraft maintenance programme, that "must take into account" the manufacturer's maintenance instructions. In practice, you'd do the letter checks more or less according to the maintenance manual. Other intervals may or may not be deviated from the suggested ones, but whatever you do must be based on something as the general idea.

Also, I don't know about Bonanza (never checked), but some aircraft/engine/propeller may have an AD on it, requiring some inspection to be done at fixed interval. Not adhering to such renders the aircraft explicitly unairworthy.

-Esa
Last edited by AKar on 29 Jun 2020, 23:01, edited 1 time in total.

awash2002
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Re: maintenance interval

Post by awash2002 »

I'll do that
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TatoBean
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Re: maintenance interval

Post by TatoBean »

AKar wrote: 29 Jun 2020, 22:57 Under EASA, you'd basically write and get an approval for an aircraft maintenance programme, that "must take into account" the manufacturer's maintenance instructions. In practice, you'd do the letter checks more or less according to the maintenance manual. Other intervals may or may not be deviated from the suggested ones, but whatever you do must be based on something as the general idea.

Also, I don't know about Bonanza (never checked), but some aircraft/engine/propeller may have an AD on it, requiring some inspection to be done at fixed interval. Not adhering to such renders the aircraft explicitly unairworthy.

-Esa
Is that even for small GA planes? The airlines do the letter checks over here but basically anything smaller than a small gulfstream usually does the 100 hour checks, or at least a variation of that called a progressive inspection (checking elements of the 100 hour over a span of about 250 hours depending on the manufacturer.)
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awash2002
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Re: maintenance interval

Post by awash2002 »

Cool and I'll do that
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Dogsbody55
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Re: maintenance interval

Post by Dogsbody55 »

I service my planes every 25 hours, and do a Bonanza inspection every 100. I live the inspection and other enhanced maintenance hangar features of the Bonanza very much and would love to see some extension of that to the other GA planes. Hope the Aerostar will have these features too.


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Mike
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AKar
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Re: maintenance interval

Post by AKar »

TatoBean wrote: 01 Jul 2020, 18:20
AKar wrote: 29 Jun 2020, 22:57 Under EASA, you'd basically write and get an approval for an aircraft maintenance programme, that "must take into account" the manufacturer's maintenance instructions. In practice, you'd do the letter checks more or less according to the maintenance manual. Other intervals may or may not be deviated from the suggested ones, but whatever you do must be based on something as the general idea.

Also, I don't know about Bonanza (never checked), but some aircraft/engine/propeller may have an AD on it, requiring some inspection to be done at fixed interval. Not adhering to such renders the aircraft explicitly unairworthy.

-Esa
Is that even for small GA planes? The airlines do the letter checks over here but basically anything smaller than a small gulfstream usually does the 100 hour checks, or at least a variation of that called a progressive inspection (checking elements of the 100 hour over a span of about 250 hours depending on the manufacturer.)
Used to be, yes. Of course, it all depended on how you wrote the programme, and what got approved (or what one self-approved, if applicable). But the basic inspection schedule was usually built around the maintenance manual's service schedule, perhaps including (just as one example) 50 h, 100 h, 500 h and 1000 h inspections, and a bunch of separately controlled items. Obviously, these were not really written out as 'letter checks' when talking about small airplanes but were sometimes referred into that way, as that gives the correct idea of the events around which the maintenance revolves.

Sometimes the progressive schedules were used, but back in time that was quite rare. The FAA system of having the annual (and possibly the 100-hour) as the only "official" maintenance events has very little direct relevance in different jurisdictions.

Edit: To add a bit, a "good" maintenance programme clearly indicates inspection/maintenance intervals that the aircraft is to comply with, AND the inspection/maintenance requirements that make up the tasks that are packaged to be performed at those intervals. These are technically not the same thing, although in case of small airplanes, they coincidentally pretty much are.

In case of many small aircraft, say, 200 h inspection is typically described in the maintenance manual as a list of checks to be performed, so that as a maintenance requirement would make up a task that takes care of most of the stuff to be done at 200 h intervals. So, a 200-hour inspection would consist primarily of that, and what other separately controlled tasks are due that time.

A complete maintenance programme for a general aviation aircraft, its engine(s) and propeller(s) may consist of, perhaps, around 50 individual tasks, depending on how it is written. For comparison, a maintenance programme of an airliner includes roughly 1000 or more individual tasks.

-Esa

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