Small Aircraft; Low Wing; 1 Eng; Fixed Gear
Flight Crew Multiengine; Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Flight Instructor; Flight Crew Commercial
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 130; Flight Crew Total 740; Flight Crew Type 640
Communication Breakdown
Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural FAR
General Release Refused / Aircraft Not Accepted
Company Policy; Procedure; Human Factors
While getting dispatched for a routine instruction flight; Dispatch informed me there may be an issue with the annual for the aircraft not being found in the maintenance logs during a previous checkride oral that day. I was told to go look into it before the flight. I went through the entire maintenance logs for the aircraft; found no annual inspection done; and went out to the airplane to check the date on its airworthiness certificate (since the airplane is very new). I went out to the aircraft; checked the airworthiness date; and found it to be [date1]; meaning it would have needed its first annual inspection done by [date2] to be legal to fly. I told the student we weren't going to fly the airplane; and we went back inside to Dispatch. They told us there to go report to Maintenance to have them clear it up; so the student and I headed up there with the logs. There we met with the head of Maintenance; and the Chief Flight Instructor for the school just happened to be there as well. I handed the logs to the head of Maintenance; and he proceeded to flip through them a few times before he closed them and told us it was good and to go fly. I asked him to show me in the logs where it showed the airplane was legal to fly; and he told me to just go fly. When I asked again if the airplane was legal to fly; he told me and my student to shake our heads yes and go. At that point the student and I left; and I told the student there was no way we were flying that aircraft. We canceled the lesson and the student went home. Another instructor that was present when I initially reviewed the logs then decided to go up to Maintenance to check the logs of the other airplanes that were delivered the same time as the one in question. He was intercepted by the head of Maintenance and told he couldn't look at the logs; and would be shown them later. Both of us instructors plus another one reviewed our logbooks afterwards and found out all three of us have flown the airplane since it was [suspected to be] out of annual; as have probably most of the instructors employed by the company. About an hour after this; the three of us were called into the Chief Flight Instructor's office. There he yelled at all three of us; telling us we were starting rumors about airplanes' airworthiness; and tarnishing the character of our head of Maintenance; who was about to receive a maintenance excellence award; and that the annual was in fact done [date3] and that there was just an error logging it. He told us to be quiet about this and not file any reports. He also mentioned that this issue was present with another aircraft in the fleet; but not specifying which one it was. The chief seemed very defensive and upset at us. After we were released someone in Dispatch mentioned the annual was erroneously put into our scheduling software as having been done in [month]; which seems to be a logical reason for the mistake to happen in the first place. It is my belief that the annual for these aircraft were never done. After the incident us three instructors canceled our flights for the rest of the day. We noticed that the aircraft in question was flying again within an hour of us leaving work; and continued to go on flights the rest of the night and the next day.
My student was taking his instrument check-ride and during the ground; they examined the logbooks. During the examination; they couldn't find the annual inspection. The aircraft was due for an annual inspection in [month year]. After finding this information I looked at the logbooks and confirmed that there was no annual inspection done since [12 months earlier] making the aircraft unairworthy starting [date]. I looked in my logbook to see if I had flown that aircraft since [date]; and I had one time. There were two other flight instructors with me at the time that also checked their logbooks to see if they had flown that aircraft; and they had. We talked through our options and decided to talk to Maintenance and see if we were missing anything. The other two instructors went to see the logs and Maintenance said the aircraft was fine and to go fly. Maintenance refused to produce the logs. When asked to see the logs the answer was 'not right now'. The instructor who was scheduled on the aircraft decided not to fly since the logs were refused to be produced. About 30 min after this myself and the 2 instructors that questioned this were called into the Chief's office. We were then reprimanded for 'starting rumors' what we saw was 'a sticker issue' and that our maintenance person was 3 years away from some award and we were compromising that by looking into this. We were then told that this is a non-issue and we don't need to concern ourselves with it anymore. I believe this is due to our company culture at a management level. I believe a solution for this is an outside auditing system of our records to make sure we are not missing anything. My main concern is that the logbooks are going to be altered to reflect an annual that wasn't actually done; or was done but after the date listed in the logbook. We are not able to see maintenance information on our flight school management program and have been kept in the dark on things. I think full transparency needs to happen so we can stay up to date on everything that is happening with the aircraft we as flight instructors are operating. We believe the same issue might have happened on one other aircraft but we did not directly witness it on the second aircraft.
Two flight instructors reported that an aircraft might be unairworthy due to a required annual inspection not done. When the instructors asked maintenance to show the aircraft logbooks; the request was refused and the Chief Flight Instructor reprimanded the instructors.