alt Hacker NewsBefore you can placard something as INOP, you must determine whether the manufacturer and certifying authority have included that part in the Minimum Equipment List or Dispatch Deviation List. Mechanics do both get to determine this at their own discretion. Hence the call to the manufacturer for clarification on the necessity of said pin.
To reiterate, you CANNOT fly an airplane with an undocumented missing part. If the part is documented in the logbook as removed, and it is acceptable to fly that way, then it is not missing.
I have been building and maintaining commercial aircraft for a living for 30 years. What is your experience?
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I don't think you guys are really disagreeing with each other. Just that one is using a colloquial definition of "missing" and the other, a technical one.
Thanks for asking for my credentials, even though you don’t seem to disagree that lots of aircraft are dispatched with imperfections, so many in fact that there’s a defined process and CFRs to cover it.
Because you asked, I’ve been flying, owning, and overseeing the maintenance of our aircraft for 27 years, including understanding my freedoms and obligations as a pilot and as an operator with regards to the legality of dispatch for imperfect aircraft under both normal operations and under special flight (aka “ferry”) permits. I have spent a lot of time across those three decades both socially and in continuing education courses/seminars with both GA and commercial flight crews and A&P/IAs.