Aviation articles by Garth Wallace         Illustration by Francois Bougie

7/ Thirteen questions, no answers

The flying school mechanic walked into the lounge. I was sitting at a table entering a flight in my aircraft journey logbook.
"Got some snags for me?" he grinned.
"Not this time," I replied. "I’m just entering a flight. Got to keep everything legal."
"That’s a joke," he snorted. "There are no legal aircraft in Canada."
"What makes you say that?"
I’ll call the mechanic "Wright" because he was, most of the time, but it’s not his real name. Wright was an older, friendly, tall man. He wore a torn, dirty shop coat.
He walked over, leaned down and planted both fists on my table, gorilla style. "Let me see that Journey Log."
I pushed the book toward him. Wright picked it up and fanned through the pages.
At the time, my airplane was 30 years old. The airframe and engine were approaching 2,000 hours. The current log covered half of it, mostly flown by me.
"For starters, you’re supposed to enter snags here," he said, plopping the open book on the table. He ran his finger down the empty column next to the signatures. "This part is as blank as my grandson’s face during a spelling bee. That means nothing ever malfunctioned on this airplane between inspections or you broke the law every time something did."
"If I enter a snag there the aircraft is grounded," I protested. "To continue the flight, I’m supposed to find a mechanic to fix it and sign it off."
"So you skip the entry and fly illegally."
"Well, if the problem was serious, I’d get it repaired," I countered. "If it’s minor, I fix it when I get home. As the owner, I’m allowed to do basic maintenance."
"Oh, for sure," he grinned, pushing the logbook back to me. "But I don’t see any entries for that either. Your airplane is still not legal."
"It won’t fly any better with good paperwork," I replied defensively.
"You’re right," the mechanic said, "but we agree that your little skate is not legal according to the log."
"OK, but that doesn’t make all aircraft in Canada illegal."
Wright pulled out a chair, sat down and leaned into my face. It signaled that he was launching into a lecture. I didn’t discourage him. I had a few minutes and I always learned something from his talks. Besides, he was entertaining.
"How many of the regulations and standards apply to your aircraft?" he asked.
"I have no idea."
"Me either but there are plenty. Then you got the manufacturer’s 30-year-old certification standards, plus airworthiness directives, service letters and Transport Canada policies. Bundle all them babies up and ask the regional offices and individual inspectors for their interpretations and they multiply. The government has spent 100 years making air regulations. It has more ways to ground aircraft than Pfizer has pills. There’s no hope of your airplane or anyone else’s being legal."
"So what are you telling me?"
"Stop fooling yourself. Accept that your airplane will never be legal and get on with the important stuff."
"Which is?"
"Making it safe."
Wright shifted his chair closer. "Who’s responsible for the maintenance on your airplane?"
"I am."
He leaned back and shook a scarred finger at me. "Now that’s an important problem."
"Why do you say that?"
"If I go out and inspect your kite," he asked pointing outside, "will I find anything wrong with it?"
"Probably."
"No probably about it. If I want to be sticky, I bet I could snag that scooter all the way to the junkyard."
"What’s your point?"
"If it’s not fit, why are you flying it?"
I shrugged.
"Because you’re a pilot. Having today’s pilots monitor aircraft maintenance is like asking my grandson if he needs to go to school. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. Ignorance is bliss and he’d be as happy as a clam to stay home."
"So I should quit flying?"
Wright grinned. "That would satisfy the regulations, but it’s the easy way out. No, don’t quit but I wish pilots could learn more practical stuff about aircraft. Pilots fly and mechanics fix. There’s a big gap in between."
"Pilots are taught aircraft components, systems, walkarounds, checklists and emergency procedures," I replied.
"Sure, sure: water in the gas; rpm drop during a magneto check; and what to do if a door opens in flight. It’s the easy stuff but thank somebody for that much."
"What else should we know?"
"It’s not just knowledge, it’s common sense," he replied. "During one of the 50-hour inspections on a flying school Cessna 150, we found the carb heat cable was broken and had been for some time. The students and instructors who had flown it said it worked fine. They pulled it out, waited a few seconds and pushed it in." Wright reached way back holding an imaginary knob. "They could have pulled the knob to the baggage compartment and never had carb heat. You can lead a horse to water but he has to be awake to drink."
Wright shifted in his chair and leaned forward again. "A Piper Cherokee owner said he could smell smoke when he flew. I looked under the instrument panel and saw four places where crumbling wires had shorted and burned. ‘It’s cooked,’ I told him. ‘You need new wiring.’ He said that was what his mechanic had told him last year. Pilots like him have more luck than brains.
"One more: A Cessna 172 owner taxied onto our ramp. I came outside because I heard a wheel bearing screaming over the noise of the compressor in the shop. His left rim was so hot that the tire was melting. The guy got out and complained about the airplane pulling to the left on the runway. I told him it was his wheel bearing. He didn’t know what I was talking about. I pointed to the tire and invited him to touch it."
"So should pilots fly with mechanics with them, or should they become mechanics before learning to fly?"
Wright rocked back in his chair. "The mechanics wouldn’t go," he laughed, "besides, pilots don’t have to fix stuff to fly. They need to learn more common mechanical sense and have to be more tuned to their airplanes."
"That could add a lot of ground instruction to the pilot courses."
"For sure," he replied and then smiled, "but you could stop teaching paperwork and the time would stay the same."
"Who’s going to do this teaching, you?"
That made him laugh again. He stood up and said, "Hey, I’m an airplane mechanic, not a miracle worker."