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Caught a cracked spar cap on a Cessna 172 last Tuesday that could have grounded the plane mid-flight
I was doing a routine annual inspection on a 1998 172 out of KPAO and my borescope caught a hairline crack running along the forward spar cap near the right wing root. The logbooks showed this plane went through a hard landing in 2019 that was signed off by a shop in Modesto with just a skin patch. Has anyone else found hidden damage that was glossed over in previous repairs?
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jessica13014d ago
...look, i'm gonna play devil's advocate here and say maybe the Modesto shop didn't actually screw up that bad. hard landings are pretty common on trainers, and a skin patch on a 172 can be totally fine if the engineering data backs it up. spar caps are thick and tough on those planes, a hairline crack after a few years of flying doesn't automatically mean someone hid it on purpose. could just be normal metal fatigue starting, especially if that wing took a beating over time.
plus, we don't know what the shop actually saw in 2019. maybe they did a basic inspection and missed it, or maybe the crack only showed up later from stresses the patch didn't fully address. human error happens, but calling it "glossed over" sounds like you're assuming they were lazy or dishonest. most mechanics i've met aren't trying to hide stuff that gets people killed. they're just overworked and underpaid like the rest of us.
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