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LESSONS LEARNED

False Economies

You can't afford to fly an aircraft you can't afford to maintain
DAVID JACK KENNY
Aviation has its share of colorful aphorisms: Airspeed-or
rotor rpm-is life. Don't simultaneously run out of airspeed,
altitude, and ideas. And of course the four most useless things
are the runway behind you, altitude above you, fuel that's
back in the truck...and a tenth of a second ago.
But the most useful from a practical standpoint might be this:
Don't buy an aircraft if your goal is saving money.
It makes sense. Parts cost 10 to 100 times what comparable
components of surface vehicles would, and the hourly rate
for the services of skilled technicians can run into triple digits
(worth every penny). This makes fixing things expensive.
Unfortunately, not fixing them becomes more expensive still.
The urge to economize can create perverse incentives that lead
owners to risk far more than they stand to save. One contract
pilot of our acquaintance, for example, recently stopped
working for a client who decided the way to postpone the
impending overhaul of his APU was to stop using it. Instead,
he's having his pilots fire up the engines and leave them at
ground idle for the 15 minutes or more it takes to load baggage
and catering, enter data into the flight management system,
and run checklists-all while some hapless lineman is left
standing in front of the jet waiting to marshal it out. Beyond
the cost of wasted fuel that could have gone toward preventing
an entirely foreseeable maintenance event, the potential
consequences of an inadvertent brake release or accidental
nudge of the power levers are terrible to contemplate.
A more dramatic example of the hazards of penny-pinching
took place in San Juan, Puerto Rico on September 22, 2016.
A Venezuelan-registered Learjet 25 arriving from Punta Cana
in the Dominican Republic was cleared to land on Runway 9
of the Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport. Visibility was
only two miles in thunderstorms under a 2,000-foot overcast.

10

There was a direct left crosswind of 8 knots from 350
degrees. The captain reported "light rain" on the windshield
that intensified as the airplane neared the runway, which
appeared to be wet. The only passenger said it was "raining
profusely," and a U.S. customs inspector on the field reported
heavy rain.
The Learjet touched down smoothly, but as it decelerated
through 80 to 90 knots, it began hydroplaning and went off
the left side of the runway into the grass. The left main gear
collapsed as it crossed the next taxiway turnoff and the airplane
spun 180 degrees before coming to rest pointing westbound.

It's hard to imagine that the total cost of
replacing the tires could have reached
even 10 percent of the bill for repairing
the accident damage.
The two pilots and only passenger evacuated the aircraft without
injury. The passenger described "two to four inches of standing
water" on the 5,539 x 100 foot asphalt runway.
The FAA inspector who responded to the accident found
white skid marks from all three legs of the landing gear on the
runway, leading to the airplane's final resting place. Three of
the main landing gear's four Goodyear tires were completely
bald, with no measurable tread remaining. The right outboard
tire had one measurable tread left. The inspector measured
its depth at 1.17 mm, less than one-twentieth of an inch.
Goodyear's maintenance manual requires replacing any tire
whose "tread has worn to the base of any groove at any spot,
or up to 1/8 of the tire circumference." The inspector also
noted that the tires installed were not either of the models
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