waspiflab wrote on Apr 2^nd, 2009 at 4:39pm:


Yes you can and you must, it is a legal requirement. Critical items are given a life. This is calculated in hours. When a component reaches it's life it has to be removed and serviced. It also has an all up life, once this is reached it has to be junked, aviation law says it has to be cut into a minimum of two pieces (so all those nice desktop parts of aircraft on sale at ebay for example??). However, catastrophic failure, that is something that just cannot be covered by the life method. I would imagine it will transpire that a defect in manufacturing or repair has laid dormant and hidden and then on that day came to the fore. Also add in the extreme salt environment the aircraft flies in. There is another huge and deadly problem that aviation has to deal with and that is fake parts coming out of Asia and the Eastern Block. This is also why junked parts have to be cut up. It is to prevent an new coat of paint and being passed off as new.

Matt