The whole concept of accountability is why many FSDOs
are making that latitude go away. If all you have to do is push
paper stamping that a
DER said a field approval is OK, then it's not your fault if it
breaks.

But all you're doing is pushing the determination from the A&P to the
DER. If having the DER say it's OK is good enough, why not the A&P?
After all, both are certificated. What's more, you can argue that you
have less responsibility with an A&P, since he supposedly met an
objective set of standards to be certificated, while a DER didn't.

It would be awfully cynical of me to believe that this is being pushed
to the DER's because anyone can become an A&P, but becoming a DER is a
cushy retirement gig for a fed or someone connected.

Again, the two fundamental axioms of certified aircraft (and flying
in general):
A. What's safe is not necessarily legal
B. What's legal is not necessarily safe.

Add a third - sometimes you have to choose one or the other, because
you can't have both.

I'll say a bad shop. If I remember correctly, there's no such thing
as
"grounding" an aircraft. It's simply not returning it to service.
Seems like one
could bail on that inspection and go elsewhere... even if you
technically have to fly
it there not "returned to service."

There's a whole discussion of this happening now on AvWeb.

Technically you are right. You can require that the IA sign off the
annual (as unairworthy) and give you a list of discrepancies, get a
ferry permit, and fly to another airport to have the discrepancies
resolved. But in real life, that's not an option unless you are at an
airport with multiple competing shops and can simply taxi over.

First off, you need a mechanic to sign off the ferry permit. We just
had one of those issues locally. A flight school plane was pranged at
an airport a few miles from home. A local shop did the repairs - but
then decided additional repairs were necessary. They wouldn't sign the
ferry permit. Nobody else on the field was going to **** in their soup
for no good reason (since he wouldn't be getting the business either)
and a mechanic had to be brought in to sign it from the home field. If
I just told an owner the plane needs a certain repair, and the owner
wants to go for a cheaper (and in my opinion less safe) repair
elsewhere, what possible incentive could I have to sign his ferry
permit? I know he's not coming back to me, so it's all extra liability
for no reason.

Second, you've just ****ed off the only shop on the field. What are
you going to do the next time something breaks and needs fixed? Get a
ferry permit every time? That means having a mechanic travel to your
home field every time something breaks. And sometimes the plane won't
be ferryable. We had a case like that too. One of the flight school
owners on the field managed to **** off EVERY A&P on the field, and
can't get any work done there. So he had to have a twin flown to
another airport with a failed brake. Of course nobody was going to
sign off on a no-brake ferry flight in a hot twin, and certainly not
anyone on the field. He got one of the flight instructors to fly it
anyway.

Your only real options, if you are based at a field with only one shop,
a
(a) Move
(b) Deal with the shop, on their terms. They have you over a barrel
(c) Learn to do your own maintenance, and get someone to sign off for
you

Michael