On Thu, 14 Aug 2003 18:17:44 -0700, "Tarver Engineering"
wrote:


"Mary Shafer" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 14 Aug 2003 14:23:24 -0400, "Ron Natalie"
wrote:

This is no longer entirely true. Within the past few years, the FAA
acquired jurisdiction over public aircraft used primarily for the
transport of personnel on a commuter- or charter-like basis. I think
it took a couple of accidents involving planes full of pax to do this.

When where?

I think one of them was a university in the midwest somewhere, one of
the state schools. They had a flight department, all unregulated, and
crashed a plane in the KingAir class, maybe in bad weather, with a
bunch of high-level folks on board. This was probably within the last
ten years.

I don't even know where to look to find the records of accidents like
this. They're not investigated by FAA or NTSB, so they're not in
either database. Maybe googling? I don't know how far back such
things go, since the WWW was only invented eight years ago. Or maybe
you can dig up some of the stuff that was going around when the NPRM
came out. There was something in AvWeek, I know.

That is, the NASA KingAirs that haul managers around have to be
maintained and operated to FAA standards. Actually, Dryden got the
FAA to accept the NASA maintenance standards as conforming to FAA
requirements. The operations and pilot licensure issues were minor
compared to that.

Are you sure this is not just a result of Drydens misbehavior in modifying
that Lear?

Yes, absolutely. That Lear wasn't used for pax; it was a science
airplane. The hard landing happened well after the new rule was
established. Anyway, the mods (which were done at Ames, long before
the airplane came down to Dryden) and maintenance didn't have anything
to do with the hard landing. It had no more to do with the rule than
did the MLG failure on the F-18 that ended in a barrier arrestment a
month or two earlier.

No, the cause was the kind of adjunct passenger operations run by
governmental bodies, not the research operation of modified aircraft.
Passenger operations that were totally unregulated by anyone with any
aviation experience. Say what you will about NASA or FAA or NOAA or
even the CHP, but you have to admit they know how to operate and
maintain aircraft professionally. It's the little three commuter
aircraft operations, run on-demand, by folks who don't have to
constantly justify what they're doing to IGs and advisory councils and
other outside reviews, that ended up being regulated by the FAA.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer