Ethics of misdiagnosis
Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser · Other Documents
Overview
This document discusses the ethical considerations surrounding aircraft maintenance, particularly focusing on the Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser. It narrates the experience of an owner dealing with a maintenance issue related to the aircraft's Lycoming O-235-C1 engine. The article emphasizes the importance of accurate diagnosis in aircraft maintenance and the potential ethical dilemmas when mechanics charge for parts and labor that do not resolve the owner's issues. It also provides insights into how aircraft owners can better understand and participate in the diagnostic process to avoid unnecessary costs and frustrations. The content is aimed at aircraft owners, mechanics, and aviation enthusiasts interested in maintenance ethics and practices.
- Aircraft maintenance is often billed on a time-and-materials basis.
- Ethical concerns arise when mechanics charge for ineffective repairs.
- Aircraft owners should actively participate in diagnosing issues.
- Gathering data about aircraft performance can aid in accurate diagnosis.
- Asking mechanics specific questions can help ensure proper diagnostics.
Document
Source
Originally published by www.savvyaviation.com. Sprinkle hosts a reference copy with an added summary, specifications and searchable full text.
Document details
- Type
- Other Documents
- Year
- 2023
- Pages
- 4
- File size
- 1.4 MB
- Publisher
- www.savvyaviation.com
Common. Rarer than 3% of the aircraft models we track.
Most owners only have the POH. Here's the essential set for the Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser.
- Pilot's Operating Handbook / AFM
- Checklist
- Maintenance Manual
- Parts Catalog (IPC)
- Systems & Wiring
- Service Bulletins
- Type Certificate (TCDS)
Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser for sale now
Free — save the PA-12 Super Cruiser to your watchlist and track it in one place.
More Piper PA-12 Super Cruisermanuals & documents
- PS-POH-1-1-01Checklist
- Avidyne 700-00182-XXX and 700-00179-XXX Approved Model List for STC SA00343BOFlight Manual
- Avidyne Traffic Advisory System Approved Model ListSystems Description
- A Handsome 1947 Piper Super CruiserOther Documents
- PIPER PA-12/14/15/16/17 with Lycoming O235 EngineSystems Description
- Aviation Occurrence Report: Stall During Initial ClimbOther Documents
- VENDOR SERVICE PUBLICATION NO. 62Service Bulletins
- Correct Procedures for Rigging a SuperCubMaintenance Manual
- Tech Sheet: Piper PA-12: Super Cruiser, J5 CubSpecifications
If you fly the Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser, you may also be researching these.
In this document
Understanding Maintenance Costs
The document explains that aircraft maintenance is often billed on a time-and-materials basis, meaning owners pay for parts and labor without a guaranteed outcome. It highlights exceptions like annual inspections and major overhauls that may have fixed pricing.
Ethical Dilemmas in Diagnosis
The article presents a scenario where a Piper PA-12 owner questions the ethics of being charged for parts that did not resolve his aircraft's starting issues. It raises the question of whether it is ethical for mechanics to charge for unsuccessful repairs.
The Role of Aircraft Owners in Diagnosis
It encourages aircraft owners to take an active role in diagnosing issues before consulting mechanics. The document suggests that owners often know their aircraft better and can gather valuable data that aids in accurate diagnosis.
Questions to Ask Your Mechanic
The article advises owners to ask specific questions about the diagnostic process when mechanics propose repairs. This ensures that repairs are based on solid evidence rather than assumptions.
Full document text
(T&M) basis in which the aircraft owner is paying for parts and labor, not for a particular result. Now, there are a few exceptions where the owner contracts with a shop for a specific result at a fixed price. For example, most annual inspec- tions are done on a flat-rate basis, strictly for the inspection itself, not for the repair of discrepancies found during the inspec- tion. Another example is major engine overhauls, which are often done on a flat- rate basis but with certain exceptions if the crankcase or crankshaft are found to be unrepairable. For pretty much every- thing else, work is done on a T&M basis where you pay for labor at an agreed-to hourly rate and you pay for parts either at list price or at the shop’s wholesale cost plus some markup. I am not an attorney, so I couldn’t give Don legal advice. But I suggested that if he took the position “the labor you expended and the parts you replaced didn’t fix my problem, so I’m not going to pay you,” he’d be on very shaky legal ground, and the shop might be justified in holding his aircraft hos- tage until he paid their bill. Conceivably, the shop might even go to court to obtain a mechanic’s lien, and in the extreme might sell the aircraft to satisfy the owner’s indebt- edness. I therefore urged Don to consult a maintenance-knowledgeable aviation attorney before acting on any thoughts he might have of not paying his shop’s invoice. Ethics of misdiagnosis Don’s ethical question was tougher: Is it ethical for a mechanic to bill an aircraft owner for parts and labor that didn’t fix the problem that the owner hired the mechanic to solve? I dodged Don’s ques- tion by posing a question of my own. “MIK E, I H AV E an ethical question for you: How should an aircraft owner determine fair compensation to a mechanic for parts and labor that were unnecessary?” The email was from a 1947 Piper PA–12 Super Cruiser owner—I’ll call him Don—who had just received an invoice from his shop and was wondering whether to pay it. Don explained that his airplane’s Lycoming O-235-C1 engine had always started easily. That changed after the last annual inspection when his A&P told him that he should be starting the engine with the magneto switch set to Left since only the left magneto was equipped with an impulse coupling for starting. Don had been starting the engine on Both for the past 20 years, and he found the engine almost impossible to start using the pro- cedure his mechanic had prescribed. S AV V Y M A I N T E N A NCE / OP I N I ON Ethics of misdiagnosis Should you have to pay for work or parts that don’t fix the problem? BY MIKE BUSCH Don reported this to his A&P, who pro- ceeded to replace the primer. There was no improvement in starting, so the A&P replaced the left magneto. Still no improve- ment. The A&P asked Don to check the idle mixture by performing an idle rpm rise test. Don performed the test and reported that there was no rpm rise (indicating an excessively lean idle mixture adjustment). “Now they want to replace the carbure- tor,” Don told me. “The bill for replacing the magneto and primer is almost $1,900. When I asked the mechanic why he replaced them, he replied ‘that’s what it is 99 percent of the time.’ Should I have to pay for that?” What are you paying for? I explained to Don that most aircraft main- tenance is done on a “time-and-materials” TRACI DABERKO AOPA PILOT / March 2023 96 RUDDER & W RENCH Savvy Maintenance coverage sponsored by AIRCRAFT SPRUCE 2303_R&W.indd 96 2303_R&W.indd 96 1/18/23 4:05 PM 1/18/23 4:05 PM “Don, is it unethical for your primary care physician to give you a prescription for some medication and tell you, ‘Try this and see if it helps’? If it doesn’t help, isn’t it likely your doc will prescribe something else on the same basis?” This sort of thing happens in medi- cine all the time, and doctors are rarely accused of unethical conduct when they prescribe drugs to their patients that they hope (but are not sure) will relieve the symptoms. “If it isn’t unethical for a doctor to do this, why should it be unethical for an aircraft mechanic?” I asked Don rhetorically. Don wasn’t persuaded by my med- ical metaphor. He pointed out that the human body is incredibly complex and not fully understood, so he wasn’t prepared to fault a doctor who failed to resolve an ail- ment on the first try. He contended that his airplane’s Lycoming O-235 engine was simpler by many orders of magnitude, so he wasn’t inclined to cut his A&P nearly as much diagnostic slack as he was his doctor. (Not to mention that his healthcare costs are covered by insurance but his airplane care costs aren’t.) I countered that physicians undergo extensive training in medical school on how to diagnose maladies accurately by systematically ruling out various possible causes until only one or two remain—a process called “differential diagnosis”—whereas A&Ps receive lit- tle or no such training and often rely on hunches and shotgunning (as Don’s ordeal illustrates). Furthermore, medi- cine includes numerous subspecialties such as radiology, pathology, and hema- tology that are totally focused on state-of-the-art diagnosis, but there’s no such thing as an FAA mechanic certifi- cate with a “diagnostician” rating. In my opinion, there should be. In fact, I made precisely this recommendation to the FAA during the 18 months I served on the aviation rulemaking advisory com- mittee subgroup tasked by the FAA with offering guidance on revising and updat- ing the training, testing, and certification of aviation maintenance technicians. Sadly, this recommendation never got any traction with the agency. Handwork and headwork Good aircraft maintenance requires a delicate balance of handwork and head- work. I find most A&Ps are quite good at the handwork part. They are typically well-trained and experienced at attack- ing aircraft with tools, sharp eyes, steady hands, and excellent hand-eye coordi- nation. I often joke that A&Ps are the
Show full textShow less
surgeons of aviation maintenance. Some mechanics are also good at the headwork part, but these are a whole lot fewer and farther between, at least in my experience. How can you tell whether your A&P is one of these gems whose head- work is as strong as his handwork? It’s not difficult. Simply notice his or her ini- tial response when you put your airplane in the shop and report that it has a problem. A good diagnostician will gather as much diagnostic data as possible. Does your mechanic ask you to dump your engine monitor data? Or send out your oil filter contents to a lab for scanning elec- tron microscopy? Or pull out a voltmeter or oscilloscope or borescope? Or ask to go up on a test flight with you so he can observe the symptoms firsthand? A not-so-good diagnostician will grab for a screwdriver, a wrench, and the illus- trated parts catalog for your aircraft. If you observe this reaction, you can bet that there’ll be some combination of diagnos- tic guesswork and exploratory surgery in your aircraft’s future. The result is almost always frustrating and expensive. I see this a lot. Frankly, it’s what keeps my company in business. We employ some 25 veteran A&P/IAs but we don’t oper- ate a shop, we don’t have any toolboxes, and we never actually see or touch any of our clients’ airplanes or make entries in their logbooks. We are expert diagnosti- cians and we work as a team to pool our best diagnostic ideas. What we offer our thousands of clients is pure, unadulterated headwork. We leave the handwork part to their regular shops and mechanics, who generally do a good job of it. If you’d like to hear what pure unadul- terated headwork sounds like, check out AOPA’s monthly podcast Ask the A&Ps that I host with my colleagues Paul New and Colleen Sterling. You’ll find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you RUDDER & W RENCH Visit AOPA.org/creditcard to learn more *Certain points and purchase restrictions apply; see full Rewards Terms and Conditions for full details at AOPA.org/creditcard AOPA.org/creditcard. 1 Rewards points can be redeemed for Cash Back or other items pro- vided through AOPA Pilot Rewards. A Cash Back redemption is applied as a statement credit. The statement credit will reduce your balance but you are still required to make at least your minimum payment. A minimum of 2,500 points is needed to redeem for Cash Back. Values for non-cash back redemption items such as merchandise, gift cards and travel may vary. Cash Back1 on Every Other Purchase 1% SWITCH AND SAVE Switch today to the AOPA World Mastercard®, and stop paying too much on your aviation purchases. CASH BACK1 APPLIED AS STATEMENT CREDIT. QUARTERLY BONUS POINT CAP OF 2,500 POINTS* 2303_R&W.indd 98 2303_R&W.indd 98 1/18/23 4:05 PM 1/18/23 4:05 PM prefer to get your podcasts. There’s also a video version on AOPA’s YouTube chan- nel. Don’t worry: Colleen, Paul, and I promise not to attack your aircraft with tools or send you an invoice. DIY diagnosis There are a couple of ways for aircraft owners to protect themselves against the frustration and expense of misdiag- nosis. Perhaps the most effective way is diagnosing the problem yourself rather than asking your mechanic to do it—or at least taking the diagnosis as far as you can before putting your aircraft in the shop. Most owners believe that diagnosis is their mechanic’s job, not theirs, but I think this is a wrongheaded view. The key to making an accurate pinpoint diagnosis is gathering data. An aircraft owner generally is in a far better position to do this than a mechanic is. Many problems only occur in flight and can’t be reproduced when the aircraft is in the maintenance hangar. If your mechanic cannot repro- duce the problem, he can’t be expected to diagnose it systematically and is reduced to using guesswork and shotgunning—exactly what you don’t want him to do. In addition, aircraft owners invariably know their aircraft far more intimately than their mechanics do. They know the airplane’s idiosyncrasies. They know what’s normal and what isn’t. Frequently, they understand the airplane’s systems better. All these things put them in a better position to recognize, isolate, and diag- nose problems. If you don’t feel sufficiently knowl- edgeable to diagnose a particular problem, there’s a wealth of diagnostic expertise at your fingertips. Type clubs can be an invaluable source of type-specific infor- mation. Manufacturer’s product support can also be extremely helpful. And it’s amazing what you can learn in a few min- utes’ worth of Googling. That’s why I urge aircraft owners to take primary responsibility for diagnos- ing their own aircraft problems, and to rely on their mechanics to fix the prob- lem once they’ve diagnosed it. If you can tell your mechanic what specific repair you want him to make rather than tell- ing him what problem you want him to INTEGRATED MFD DISPLAY PERSONALIZE YOUR SETUP WITH OUR Flush mount system! FLY OUR GUARDIAN AVIONICS APP while using other popular apps! OUR iPAD BASED COCKPIT IS FAA CERTIFIED! guardianavionics.com TAKE 10% OFF using ‘IPAD4AOPA’ at checkout! THE PANELOF THE is FUTURE HERE! 2303_R&W.indd 99 2303_R&W.indd 99 1/18/23 4:05 PM 1/18/23 4:05 PM solve, you’ll invariably be a lot happier with the outcome. Avoiding mechanic misdiagnosis Now, there may be times when you have no choice but to rely on your mechanic to diagnose certain issues because you lack the time, expertise, or inclination to do it your- self. How can you protect yourself against misdiagnosis, guesswork, and shotgunning in such situations? You can do it by asking your mechanic the right questions. Don’s A&P: “Don, I’ve been looking into your hard starting problem, and I think we should replace your left magneto.” Don: “Oh boy. What’s that going to cost?” A&P: “$700 for a rebuilt magneto, plus an hour and a half of labor to install and time it.” Now Don asks the threshold question: “What steps did you take to diagnose the problem as a faulty left magneto?” If the A&P replies with something like, “I tested the coil with my digital multimeter, and the resistance of the sec- ondary winding measured significantly lower than what the manual calls for, indi- cating that the coil is shorted internally,” then Don can be confident in the mechan- ic’s diagnosis and should authorize the proposed magneto replacement. On the other hand, if the A&P says something like, “In my experience, hard starting is almost always caused by a bad magneto,” then Don knows his mechanic is relying on a hunch and guesswork, and would be wise to insist on better diagnostic evidence before approving the replacement of a costly component. For example, Don might ask his mechanic, “What tests can we perform on the magneto to determine whether it’s bad?” Or perhaps, “Could we try swapping the left and right magneto, attaching the impulse coupling to the other mag, and see if the symptoms change?” You get the idea. mike.busch@savvyaviation.com savvyaviation.com. 100 Ask the A&Ps / Mike Busch, Paul New, and Colleen Sterling answer your toughest aviation maintenance questions on our Ask the A&Ps podcast. Submit questions to podcasts@aopa.org. aopa.org/ask-the-a-and-ps RUDDER & W RENCH Upgrade Before It’s Too Late • IntelliAudio® True Dimensional Sound • IntelliVox® – Proven Automatic VOX • USB Charge – 10 or 15 Watts • Audio Distribution – Pilot can hear Foreflight alerts but others won’t Call us, we love talking audio panels and airplanes. 800-427-2376 or 865-988-9800 PMA8000G PMA450C GARMIN®and GMA340 is a trademark of GARMIN Ltd. PS Engineering, Inc. is not affiliated in any way. Affordable Slide Out - Slide In - Replacements Service Advisory: End of Service 21115B 2303_R&W.indd 100 2303_R&W.indd 100 1/18/23 4:05 PM 1/18/23 4:05 PM
56 Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser parts for sale
See all →
Parts listed for sale by vetted eBay sellers — confirmed on eBay at checkout.