NTSB Recommends Confirmation of Maintenance Programs

Prompted by the 2005 Chalk’s Ocean Airways Grumman accident in 2005, the National Transportation Safety Board wants FAA to verify the maintenance programs of commercial operators have the capacity to identify, analyze and fix recurring or systemic deficiencies to ensure continued airworthiness. The...

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Prompted by the 2005 Chalk’s Ocean Airways Grumman accident in 2005, the National Transportation Safety Board wants FAA to verify the maintenance programs of commercial operators have the capacity to identify, analyze and fix recurring or systemic deficiencies to ensure continued airworthiness. The Board cited poor maintenance as the cause of the crash and FAA for its failure to identify Chalk’s inadequate program. Related Story
Flight logs documented numerous fuel leak discrepancies on the aircraft, including leaks from either the left or the right wing near the fuel tank six times during a five-day period. The aircraft also experienced a fuel leak in its right wing dry bay for three consecutive days, repaired only by replacing the fuel tank sealant and skin replacements.
Chalk’s violated its continuous airworthiness maintenance program (CAMP) and CASS program because it did not collect and analyze operational data for underlying cause of the leaks which was structural damage to the wing.
“If Chalk’s Ocean Airways had established a repair threshold that limited the number of times such a discrepancy may recur in a given period, the recurrence of the leaks following multiple repairs may have prompted further troubleshooting, maintenance, engineering, and/or grounding of the airplane,” said the Board. “The establishment of repair thresholds in all maintenance programs would help ensure that repeated occurrences of a specific discrepancy would be sufficiently evaluated. Therefore, the Safety Board believes that the FAA should verify that the maintenance programs of commercial aircraft operators include stringent criteria to address recurring or systemic discrepancies, including, if necessary, further analysis of the discrepancies through a comprehensive engineering evaluation.”
In earlier recommendations, the Board called on the FAA to require air carrier maintenance departments use the engineering services available from the manufacturer or other sources to periodically evaluate their maintenance practices. The FAA said such programs were already adequate and engineering departments already partner with manufacturers to ensure airworthiness. However, Chalk’s had neither the aircraft manufacturer nor an engineering department in favor of engineering support through contracts with multiple designated engineering representatives. “This type of support does not provide the comprehensive understanding of the operator’s fleet that sole-source engineering support could provide,” said the Board. “In addition, a structural repair manual was not issued for the G-73 because one was not required at the time the airplane was manufactured. The Safety Board notes that, because of the limited availability of engineering services and manufacturer support for the G-73T airplanes, effective FAA oversight of the Chalk’s Ocean Airways maintenance program plan was important to ensure that the program addressed the airworthiness issues of such a fleet. However, although the program plan met Federal Aviation Regulation requirements and the principal maintenance inspector performed his required oversight activities, these activities did not result in the detection and correction of the systemic deficiencies in the maintenance program that led to this accident.”