Trade-in

That wasn't the issue. The problem was that the guy wanted his
mechanic to do an *annual*. That means that the mech. could declare
the aircraft unairworthy for perhaps ridiculous reasons, write 'em up
in the logs and ground the airplane away from home.

Not to nit-pick, but technically there is no such thing as IA "writing
up" an aircraft. The worst that can happen is a logbook entry that
states "Perfomed xyz inspection this date... list of discrepancies
given to owner", NOTHING MORE (part 43.11). Your A&P (or yourself,
under supervision or if the discrepancies fall under preventive
maintenance in appendix A) can then correct such items an approve the
a/c for return to service (without further involving the IA who
performed the inspection, BTW). Two separate tasks that can be
perfomed by two different people - inspection and return to service
(43.7).

That said, as an owner, I do understand the concern of having an
unknown party (presumably loyal to the buyer) poke around the airplane
and look for trouble, I guess I would get some basic references and
certainly not release the *original* logs to them. But I don't think
its outrageous that a buyer would want to perform a prepurchase
inspection that happens to include all the items spelled out by the
service manual for an annual inspection (hint, hint). Always two ways
to slice a cat, to both parties satisfaction, I guess that's my
point...

Martin

In article ,
(Martin Kosina) wrote:

That wasn't the issue. The problem was that the guy wanted his
mechanic to do an *annual*. That means that the mech. could declare
the aircraft unairworthy for perhaps ridiculous reasons, write 'em up
in the logs and ground the airplane away from home.

Not to nit-pick, but technically there is no such thing as IA "writing
up" an aircraft.

"writing up" and giving a logbook entry of discrepancies are pretty
much the same thing.

--
Bob Noel

"Matthew P. Cummings" wrote:

On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 15:52:35 -0500, Dan Luke wrote:

the "serious" buyers have been worse. Some
insist on their mechanics doing an annual at some out of town shop (no
way!), another got my friend to fly out of town for a pre-buy, then didn't

That's plain silly. When I buy a plane there is no way I'm letting the
mechanic who knows the owner and has done the previous annuals do my
pre-buy. If an owner won't let a third party examine it then I'd be
suspicious about what he's covering up.

Beg to differ. If my plane was for sale, any potential buyer who
insists on taking it out of town for a pre-buy annual inspection can
take a hike. No problem if they want to bring their mechanic on-site
for an inspection. But if that inspection is going to amount to a
full-blown annual, I'd want some kind of agreement to purchase if no
"serious" problems are found. The risk to the seller of something
getting broken, or not being put back together correctly, by an
unknown mechanic, is not insubstantial.

Jim Rosinski
N3825Q