New ASI video on a fatal fuel-filter blockage.

This Air Safety Institute video has the title "Public Benefit Flying: Michigan" yet, strangely, the well known concerns around that type of operation are not really addressed in it.

It's a straightforward report on an engine failure over water in a C206 with tragic results.

But whatever it's called, it is another lesson on all the little things in planes that can have huge consequences when they fail, at the wrong time and the wrong place.

In others we trust and put our life on the line for, but in the end we are all human and trusting, and hoping that these others lookout for your best interests.

I feel for this pilot as he went above and beyond what was required for the flight, only to be let down by someone else not doing properly what he was paid to do.

How many out there would have questioned the maintence done?

I probably wouldn’t have.

In others we trust and put our life on the line for, but in the end we are all human and trusting, and hoping that these others lookout for your best interests.

 

I feel for this pilot as he went above and beyond what was required for the flight, only to be let down by someone else not doing properly what he was paid to do.

 

How many out there would have questioned the maintence done?

 

I probably wouldn’t have.

A salutary reminder of the potential lack of quality of maintenance.

And in a way the only way around it is to go into a branch of aviation where you can do your own maintenance and then at least you know it’s been done.

My experience has been that maintenance organisations and individuals do not take kindly to the type of questioning the video suggests pilots should ask after maintenance. If you ask “has everything been done by the book?” - No maintenance professional is going to say “ No”.

so it’s a pointless question. If you get specific about things they’ll get irritated and say it’s been done, even if it hasn’t.

In a lot of our local places I think if you question them to any detail they’ll give all your books and tell you to go away and don’t come back.

My experience was that when I owned an R22 for 6 years. I had failures of something after every 100 hourly, related directly to shoddy work by the only maintainer I had in my area. But my guy wasn’t the only poor operator. In our local area we’ve had multiple examples of accidents and incidents caused by maintenance errors ( multiple different LAME maintainers)

Since I now do my own on my own Jabiru I’ve had none. Nothing like having your own butt in the seat to make you do good maintenance.

An example of how little things can bring a plane down. It also raises the question of whether someone who isn't going to be flying in the plane will do maintenance as carefully as the person who will be in the plane. I know that I feel safer doing my own maintenance after seeing how some mechanics go about their work.

That would never happen at the shop were I work.

On the piloting side of things did they get it turned back into wind, should have been a touch down speed of less than 30 kn, it hit a lot harder than that.

. Nothing like having your own butt in the seat to make you do good maintenance.

A company that I flew with in a hilly island to our north had a very comforting, (but unwritten), policy of the LAME having to be on the test flight on every aircraft they signed off on. This especially applied to major repairs on, or replacement of, an engine on a remote strip - usually under the cover of a tarpaulin. One memorable occasion was the 1st flight with a replacement engine in a Cessna 185 off Naoro, (a 412m strip on the Kokoda track): LAME didn't breathe until we were past 1000ft agl!! Another occasion was with a repaired C185 off Wanigela, (on the N coast NE of Port Moresby): LAME held his breath for 30 mins while we climbed high enough to get through the Owen Stanley Range.

happy days,

This one's sort of related, but the failed thing ain't quite so little (con-rod in a [modified] 80HP Rotax) and it wasn't at quite so bad a time or place.

And the lesson to learn is a bit different in this case.

(This is a longish story. To cut to the chase you can jump from 02:00 to 19:00.)