2009-06 · NASA ASRS report 839677
A Chief Inspector for a helicopter repair and conract service provider; reports their Director of Maintenance (DOM) had generated a logbook entry and posted an Airworthiness Directive in the Eurocopter AS-350's records as completed; without a review by Quality Control. The AD required removal; disassembly and inspection of the main rotor head and was not listed on the helicopter's work order.
During a review of records with the purpose of updating airworthiness directive (AD) compliances; it was found an AD 2000-20-19 was entered on a prior log inspection entry dated June 2009. As a precaution to verify compliance before signing the ad compliance record; which is a listing of all AD's applicable to the aircraft; I checked the actual work order. The Director of Maintenance (DOM) had initiated the work order and generated the squawk listing for this scheduled inspection. The AD was not listed as a squawk and therefore; could not be signed off as complied with. The DOM had generated the log entry and posted this in the aircraft records. The process of the DOM generating the work order; and completing the log entry without a review by quality control; does not follow repair station procedures; which are distinctly outlined in our repair station manuals. As Chief Inspector for the repair station; it is my responsibility to ensure all required work is listed and correctly documented for compliance. Since the DOM chose to ignore this process; and ignore the published procedures; proper compliance with the AD cannot be verified. Not following repair station procedures and FAA requirements was a major factor in this event.
Reporter stated Airworthiness Directive (AD) 2000-20-19 requires the removal; disassembly and inspection of the main rotor head every 500 flight hours. Ten flight hours after reinstallation; the Eurocopter must be removed from service and the rotor head re-torqued.Reporter stated he has real concerns about the Director of Maintenance ignoring their repair station manuals and procedures.
Source: NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (public domain). Reports are voluntary submissions and are not verified by NASA.
Loading the flight search…
Pick an aircraft model — Boeing 737, Airbus A320, A380, Boeing 787 Dreamliner and more — enter your origin airport, and FlightFinder shows every route that plane flies from there with live fares.
We support Boeing 737/747/757/767/777/787, the full Airbus A220/A319/A320/A321/A330/A340/A350/A380 family, Embraer E170/E175/E190/E195, Bombardier CRJ and Dash 8, and the ATR 42/72 turboprops.
Search and schedules are free. Pro ($4.99/month, $39/year, or $99 one-time lifetime) unlocks the enriched flight card — on-time stats, CO₂ per passenger, amenities, live gate & weather — plus My Trips with push alerts.
Live schedules come from Amadeus, AeroDataBox and Travelpayouts. Observed routes (which aircraft actually flew a given city pair) are crowdsourced from adsb.lol ADS-B data under the Open Database License.