The Feb. 13, 2025, edition of the eHotline newsletter from the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) included two news stories about FAA feedback.
The first, “Final Piper Rudder AD Rejects Most Community Input,” is about FAA Airworthiness Directive (AD) 2025-02-11.
“Numerous commenters opposed the AD when it was proposed last year, including EAA and its Vintage Aircraft Association (VAA) division,” EAA officials reported on the association’s website. “VAA invested extensive time and resources into proposing an alternative on-condition testing technique, as well as an alternative strengthening method that was minimally invasive and would not require a fabric re-cover. EAA argued for the rescinding of the AD due to its being based on a small number of occurrences, including several uniquely modified aircraft, as well as covering many low-horsepower models that have no known history of failures.
“In the end, the FAA disagreed with almost all comments that were critical of the AD and made almost no changes. The only significant concession was creating a new ‘Category IV’ for aircraft such as the J-3 and PA-11 that have low-horsepower engines installed — not removing these aircraft from the applicability list but giving them a 10-year compliance time instead of 5 years.”
I fly a J-3 owned by a friend, so I’m glad to see he has more time to comply with the AD.
But the juxtaposition of the Piper AD story and the story that followed put a smile on my face.
The second news story, “The FAA Needs Your Input,” is about the FAA’s annual General Aviation and Part 135 Survey.
From the EAA newsletter: “Participation is voluntary, but the FAA needs your help to inform funding, recommendations, and more. We encourage everyone who is contacted to respond!”
I’m not a cynical person, so if you received a notice from the FAA asking for your feedback, I hope you will speak up.
Regardless, well done EAA. Thanks for the chuckle.
The staffers at FAA are likely holdovers from the Obama (the traitor) regime, and China Jo Xi Den’s reign of incompetence, who are still trying to do away with private aircraft. This was a vital part of their strategy to do away with all forms of private transport, cars, trucks, etc. and shuttling us all on to public transportation. By forcing the AD they hope to ground a part of the GA fleet permanently.
If “their” goal is to ground the GA fleet as part of the “move to get us all onto public transportation” then they are even dumber than you claim.
The AD affects 6,500 aircraft out of a GA fleet of over 210,000, and can be complied with, thus “un-grounding” the aircraft (as stated in Kelly C’s reply) for about $2,000.
At that rate, it will take them several thousand years to ground the entire GA fleet, and that assumes they allow NOTHING to be repaired or modified, ever.
Is THIS particular AD note necessary? Maybe, maybe not, I don’t know, but what I do know is that I’ve worked with a LOT of people from the FAA, and the vast majority of them have a pretty good idea of what they are doing, are quite competent, and do not have an “agenda” or “crusade” against general aviation.
Nobody likes getting AD notes, but they are not a personal attack on you, your airplane, or your freedoms. The goal of an AD note is to keep you alive so you can continue to enjoy your airplane and your personal freedoms. Are some AD notes incorrect or over-reaching? Perhaps, but I’d far rather be safe than sorry – or dead.
Fly safe . . .
I own a 1946 PA-12 Piper Super Cruiser on Wipline floats. It was fully restored about 14 years ago and the floats added. I have owned the plane now for 5 years. The moment I learned there was a potential of the rudder folding over at the top, I researched the logs to see if the rudder frame was original to the plane or had been replaced when the aircraft was restored. It was original to the plane. It also had an aftermarket beacon added to the top. I didn’t wait for the FAA to issue an AD, and instead, put safety first. I removed the beacon light and bought a new frame. I had the frame covered and painted. The old rudder was removed and the new rudder was installed. Cost was $2,000 start to finish. It was a small price for insurance and peace of mind. Was it necessary? Probably not. It’s just not worth the risk.
Does the FAA have anyone remotely familiar with tune and fabric aircraft anymore? Given the scarcity of A&P who will perform steel tubing much less fabric would lead me to believe they do not. Their absolutely closed minded response in rejecting extensive information and engineering data from several reputable organizations and talented engineers and A&P/IA leads one to believe this was simply a bureaucratic decision based on what’s easiest for the FAA.
If this issue is important enough to warrant an AD, how can they justify a ten year window to comply for Cat IV? My 1946 J-3 will be 79 years old this year. Fully restored in 2012 after forty-three years disassembled and stored in a hangar, it now has just under 2200TT and 300 since rebuild. I can fly another ten years and a few more hundred hours safely before it becomes unsafe. Laughable. It may well be someone else’s problem as in ten years, I may well not be able to crawl in and out of it anyway.
In regards to low end General Aviation, the FAA is about as helpful as the IRS.
The problem is the FAA is not really interested in safety, they only hide behind the illusion that they are. They are only interested in government control for government sake, not the people they are supposed to serve. If they where really interested in safety, this AD would have been resolved with our input and not ignored. There are so many hurdles FAA plants in front of us to keep us from actually fixing the real problems.
I think the FAA (and about every other branch of our government) needs to really work on regaining the trust of the people they are supposed to be serving.
FAA is supposed to work on aviation safety. In order to do so, it has to collect data, analyze it, and make recommendations based on that.
Problem is that if nobody trusts the FAA (or any other branch of government), nobody is going to be supplying the data for them to work on. Consequently, they will be flailing around in the dark and accomplishing nothing (and often further alienating the people they are supposed to be working for).
There is some justification for the FAA knowing how I use my airplane. For instance, if 25 of my make/model have had failures in aerobatic use, I’d prefer not to be # 26.
Unfortunately, it often seems the less government knows about us the better off we are. This adversarial relationship benefits nobody, and we (them and us) ought to be looking for ways to change it. In the meantime “We seek to avoid Imperial entanglements” seems to be good advice.
Of the approximate 204,000 GA aircraft, we pilots crash about 1,000 of them every year. So, even though it’s only 0.5% of the fleet, it’s enough data to do analysis, and add to the FARs or issue ADs, and publish dockets on crashes… So, read them and avoid what those pilots did.
It’s been said that the FARs have been ‘ written in blood’, telling us what we can’t do.
So, 99.5% of us fly safely enough to not crash….that’s pretty good.
The FAA doesn’t need to know when I’m flying, following all the regs.!
Besides, the FAA has all that ADSB-out data , for the 40% of the fleet that is equipped.
I’m learning that a major part of aircraft planning ties to forecasting the type and volume of traffic. As far as I’ve been able to learn, nobody ever confirms the accuracy of these forecasts.
Pretty sure ‘they’ already know what you do with your aircraft, JimH.
Nope..!! No ADSB-out, just a mode C. I don’t need to fly in class C and B airspace.
I’m good to go into class D, so that’s all I need.!
The fuel pumps know how much fuel I buy. That’s about it.
from my comment yesterday;
This is not an anonymous survey , requiring an ‘N’ number.
The questions are very detail on the use of the aircraft.
So, sorry, the FAA doesn’t need to know what I do with my aircraft .
they already track ADSB-out data.