I am the PIC of the aircraft in question. The Transport Canada Civil Aviation Safety Alert has now been published regarding the Control Column in Pa-28 aircraft. Here is the link. https://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/civilaviation/opssvs/civil-aviation-safety-alerts-2016-14.html The whole issue of closer examin...

Great suggestion. Thank You. BTW, I checked my email further and saw a PDF link to FAA. At appears when I logged onto their system and told my story, they took it seriously and are conducting inquiries. I reached out them again today. Hopefully I will hear back from them soon. I will keep everyone u...

Well fellow aviators, it has been 7 months today since the failure of the T-Bar control column in the Cherokee that I was flying. Not a word from Transport Canada or TSB, nor FAA. Think maybe they are hiding something or simply, "don't care"? I know it sounds a little advisarial on my part or at lea...

Very interesting. Thank you PilotDAR for looking that up for us. I am sure it took a bit of digging. It certainly speaks to the use of trim. Irrespective of the manufacture's compliance with the regulations in its design of the aircraft, at a low altitude over a runway even if the aircraft is struct...

Thank you Photofly. Suffice to say there are very few pilots that would endouver to attempt such precision flying. The best time to do it is with a flight instructor. The practice of, "precision" flying is best use of air time any pilot can expend. Glad to see you have made the connect regarding the...

Hi New-PIC. Good for you. Yes, play with your aircraft and, "feel" it. I teach my students to, "get off the control column." Not completely, but as pilots we need to occasionally make notes, study our chart while navigating, turn around and talk to a passenger, etc. The sooner we realize we can keep...

Thank you Newbiewings and PilotDAR. Yes it will be interesting to see what TSB has to say about the the material and the weld. I suspect you both have a very good understanding of welding procedures and material integrity. PilotDAR you are absolutely correct that education can be a life saver. I wil...

UPDATE I just received word that a third T-Bar control assembly PASSED its NDT inspection. This particular assembly came out of a Cherokee with 13,000 hours. I am not sure how this successful test is going influence the future actions of the TSB and/or Piper Aircraft Corporation however, it does sh...

BTW, "Thank you" PilotDAR for creating the link on PPRUNE. I never thought of that even though I am a member. I so seldom access aviation websites. This is clearly a good way to "get the word out". I had contacted another Canadian general aviation advocacy organization however, to my surprise, disma...

Yes good idea Peter. Thank you. Actually that was a question that TSB had for me, "Do you secure the control column via the seatbelt?" I said, 'No" because the school Cherokees have control column ties installed.

Hi RXL and NEWBIEWIINGS.. Thank you both for your feedback and sharing your thoughts. This is my first exposure to an, "crack" detection methodology. As you can appreciate, as a previous 1963 Beech Musketeer owner and seasoned flight instructor, I am familiar with the need to send fixed props away f...

Thank you Peter. Glad to hear your 3 failures didn't result in any injuries or tragedies. Hope that is the last of them in journey as a pilot. Based on the feed back on this forum entry, it appears that there are some concerned pilots out there that I believe will pass the word around about this inc...

Breitling B1 with Co-Pilot, (2004)

Thank you GYVAIR. Yes, I saw that photo on E-Bay as I queried same shortly after the incident as I was not familiar with the T-Bar assembly. Even though I teach ground school, everything is dedicated to the engine and aircraft control, "surfaces", etc. How the aileron and pitch controls are connecte...

Second Cherokee Photos

https://www.dropbox.com/sc/jci536iuda7y ... R8WawEbk5a

These are the NDT photos of the decommissioned Cherokee T-Bar assembly. Please let me know if these photos do not display.

Thanks

Hi Heliian. Haha! I am still, "Stumbling" around this site as I have never accessed it before! All good questions that I can not answer. I am just the pilot who was flying the plane when it broke. By sharing my experience and photos I am trying to do my part to possibly prevent it from happening to ...

Thank you PilotDAR. You did an excellent job of articulating the quandaries of maintaining an aged aircraft. You can appreciate my hesitation of jumping to a conclusion before the TSB report, in all fairness to the manufacture. I have really enjoyed flying Piper aircraft in my ab initio training, CP...

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/efoyj1r0vzm6 ... cVuSa?dl=0

Here are some photos in my Dropbox because the photos are too large to attach to this site.

Thank you Peter. I actually had to pull over to respond to your message Did you have any failures like mine in a Cherokee? Piper says it is a first. If so I would like to inform TSB as I think a case is building towards an airworthiness directive. If this really isn't the first failure of a Cherokee...

Gentlemen, the point of my post is to simply let pilots know such a failure has occurred. Let's let TSB do their job and tell us why it failed. My mission is to disseminate the incident so those flying such aircraft are aware that cracks could be developing at the weld of their t-bar. Visual inspect...

900HP you were very fortunate. Yes, it can get pretty busy at CYAV. The aircraft in question is CGQPN. It is 39 years old with 21,000 hours. I have my suspicions as to the cause of the failure but it is only speculation and that would not be fair to the manufacturer. I will wait and see if the TSB r...

True GYVAIR, I just wanted to stick to the facts. In retrospect, I believe altitude was was probably much lower because we were looking forward so not quite sure of the altitude. The facts were taken out of my scribed journey log entry which was completed shortly after the event, hence the discrepen...

Thanks for reading GYVAIR and please pass on the message. I figure I won the, "life" lottery. I am not going to push my luck. I suspect we will hear more about this in the future from both TSB and Piper Aircraft Corp. The ramifications of this type of failure are pretty substantial. Fly Safe.

CADOR: 2016C0338. Not withstanding the fact that this incident which is classified by the Transportation Safety Board as an accident, which is still under investigation to determine a cause, I could not in good conscience belay advising my fellow aviators, aviator friends, instructor cadre, ex-instr...

CADOR: 2016C0338. Not withstanding the fact that this incident, which is classified by the Transportation Safety Board as an accident, and is still under investigation to determine a cause, I could not in good conscience belay advising my fellow aviators, aviator friends, instructor cadre, ex-instru...