I don't know this for sure, but when I was talking with my IA one time
about different planes pros/cons -- he told me the Cessnas had a
lifetime on the wing.

I remembered he mentioned something like 10,000 hours. I remember
because I thought that was such a high number that it would hardly be
soemthing to worry about.

But you might want to look into it....


Chuck
PA28-180



On Sun, 10 Jul 2005 16:24:55 -0400, Andrew Gideon
wrote:


My club is purchasing another 172. One of the choices we've found - and
otherwise nice airplane - has racked up 10,000 hours total time. Most of
the other aircraft at which we've looked have had TTs of something less
than half this.

Are there special considerations for an airframe with this much time? Is it
just a matter of looking for fatigue (which I'd expect any annual do to
anyway), or is there more?

I did some web searching. One phrase I found in:

http://www.avweb.com/news/reviews/182570-1.html

bugged me a bit:

some of these aircraft are still going strong well beyond 10,000 hours

So is that 10,000 a line beyond which one starts to expect an aircraft to
not be "going strong"?

In the same article, I found:

In short, Cessna has now gone from having the worst
corrosion-proofing in the industry to having the best.
The airframes of the 1997 Cessna singles will undoubtedly
last as long as anyone wants to fly them.

We're looking at late 1970/early 1980 aircraft. Are they in the "worst
corrosion-proofing" window?

I've been pointed at:

http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/newsite...5cracks-ac.pdf

but a cursory glance makes me think this is aimed more at someone getting an
aircraft certified than anything else. No?

Any other thoughts, recommendations, suggestions, etc. would be most
welcome.

Thanks...

Andrew