On Mon, 29 Mar 2004 16:02:01 GMT, "Mike Rapoport"
wrote:

No, I don't think we need Ms. Cleo :-). Nor do I think that the owners are
"negligent". The owners are doing the "minimally required maitenance". If
they wanted to know whether the alternator was on its last legs, it is
pretty easy to check the bearings and the brushes wear predictably.

OK, so there's a document somewhere which tells me how many hours life
my alternator has from last time the brushes were replaced? I don't
know (is there a handy list of everything covered in an annual
somewhere?) - are the brushes and bearings routinely checked at 100hr
or annual inspections? I know that there's a wear indicator on my
vacuum pumps which I'll have swapped out with new at around 80% wear
indicated.

Basically my point of view is that if I am responsible for deciding what to
replace and when, then I am responsible for the outcomes. If I choose to
save money by not doing something and that decision results in a failure,
then I should be financially responsible.

Personally, I believe the owners are responsible for the cost of
getting the aircraft itself fixed. Unless caused by the renter,
that's generally how it works - even with cars. That having been
said, if I was renting it and was unwilling/unable to wait until a
mechanic fixed it (course, I don't understand why they had to fly a
mechanic in - was there no repair facility at/near the airport the
aircraft landed at?) I'd expect to foot my own rentacar bills and
hotel bills to get back home. It's up to them to get the aircraft
back to the line once it's fixed. So, basically in this case I
believe that if the pilot couldn't wait until the next morning to have
an A&P look at it, he's on his own for rentacar, hotel etc (same as he
should have been if it was a weather issue). The owners are on the
hook for getting a pilot out there to fetch it, and paying for the
repair, which is the difference from weather abandoned - the
abandoning pilot should pay for retrieval if they weren't waiting if
it's weather-induced.

Mike
MU-2


"Peter Clark" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 29 Mar 2004 02:48:25 GMT, "Mike Rapoport"
wrote:

I agree that there are infant mortality failures that can't be predicted
and
the manufacturer is responsible for those. The owners could have replace
the alternator the day before but didn't. They are the ones making the
maitenance decisions so they need to live with the consequences.

This is where I must have missed something in the original poster's
set of facts. If the owners are doing minimally the FAA required
maintenance on the aircraft and the alternator was showing no sign of
problems when the pilot took off with it, how is the failure
automatically a result of the owner's negligence, which appears to be
your position? Are you somehow going to know to replace an apparently
perfectly good alternator the day before it shows signs of problems
and subsequently breaks down? There is no indication here that the
alternator was squawked prior to this flight. There is nothing in the
record that shows whether or not at the onset of the flight there was
an alternator light on in the aircraft, or whether or not the
voltmeter was showing normal things during the runup checks. I assume
that the pilot wouldn't take the aircraft out if it the light was on
or the voltmeter was showing wrong, right? It would not be airworthy.
So, are you expecting the owners to call Ms. Cleo and find out it's
going to break and then arrange to have it replaced before the pilot
picked up the aircraft? Until something is uncovered during
maintenance (there is no mention of lax maintenance here) or during
runup and then squawked (at which point the flight should not have
left the originating airport) the owner has no way of knowing to
replace something. I include in routine maintenance those things with
wear-lives that have listed hours-to-replace/rebuild even though they
might not be showing anything wrong at the time they're
replaced/rebuilt.

I'm just saying that if the owners had deferred fixing a known issue
with the alternator then yes, definitely negligence and not only their
issue, but they should be picking up 100% of all costs including food,
lodging, and rental cars - but if they did the required maintenance,
with no known issues deferred (and there is no evidence in this set of
facts to contend otherwise), I am having problems seeing how anyone
could contrive owner negligence into this scenario.


Mike
MU-2




"Peter Clark" wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 27 Mar 2004 23:33:45 GMT, "Mike Rapoport"
wrote:

I guess that I see it differently.

The owners are responsible for maitenance and they should be
responsible
when lack of maitenance causes a problem. It is their call whether to
replace things to insure better reliability.

Maybe I missed it but who said that the owners shirked any required
maintenance, or were lax in their maintenance here? Things break. I
lost an alternator control unit in a 2003 Skyhawk SP which was
delivered in December and only had 75 hours total time. How could
that possibly be due to bad/non maintenance?