Thread: My CTLS is Getting Ready!

Hello All: I just got an email from Jeremy, lChief of Maintenance, Lockwood Aviation, Sebring (SEF) FL, and he told me that they have the repair details from Flight Design and the aircraft will be ready soon. I digress, on 1 March, a wind storm blew down an old storage shed and a wall fell on my CT in a(shade Hanger-shed was a wall) and it suffered damage, including several cracks in areas that were a concern to flight safety. I am not an engineer and along with others, we exercised the "better safe than sorry" option and trucked the bird to Sebring and sought guidance from Flight Design. It took more than three month for the engineers to decide how to repair the damage, excessive by any standard.

I guess my frustration is showing here, within 3 days of the accident, the insurance adjuster had viewed the plane, the General manager of Sebring Aviation, John Hurst, took additional pictures, my insurance agent was notified and had pictures, and FLIGHT DESIGN WAS NOTIFIED OF THE ACCIDENT AND SUPPLIED WITH PHOTOS ALONG WITH A REQUEST FOR REPAIR GUIDANCE! After 3 months of vassillation, Tom Peghiny, Flight Design North American President, finally had to intercede--4 days after his contact, the repair instructions were issued. Hopefully, this situation will not be repeated as I think FD got the message that responsiveness is important; dragging things out is not!

Now, should anyone suffer damage not involved with flying the airplane, I would suggest the following: ;look at the plane and take pictures, lots of pictures; next write a narrative (what happened as best you know); without delay, call your insurance agent-explain what happened, answer all his questions and be sure you determined who will contact the adjuster - this is critical becasue many adjusters reside in regional offices and may not be close to th agent. So, good communications are vital so you can get together to assess the damage; here a call to the maintenance folks you plan on using is in order-this is another important step because both the adjuster and your agent will want to see the repair estimate and may need to talk to them. No, your are not done yet.

The final, drawn out phase is getting the airplane fixed. In my case it was decided that I should not/not fly the airplane, so trucking was in order. HERE BE SURE YOU ESTABLISH WHO IS PAYING FOR THE TRANSPORT! My insurance payed for it, but I knew that prior to contacting Lockwood. Screwup here and you will pay big bucks. Then carefully communicate what is wrong, again in my case I test taxied the airplane and I found a few things I was not sure of -- these issues were those I could not be sure or not the accident caused them or not. I transmitted this to the maintenance guys, who were less than happy, because they like up front estimates, not possible supplimental charges that insurance companies really don't like. However, both parties are aware of this and it is part of the repair process - including getting in and finding additional damage.

The idea is to separate the legitimate insuance covered costs and those you are responsible for - bottomline is that owning an airplane sometimes costs extra. I maintained a correspondance wthe the maintenance folks and when they were simply waiting I got on them a bit, unfairely as it turns out. They finally had to haul out the big gun to get answers and my prodding did puch the process along. Point here is that I was not pushing the repair process as I was pushing to get Flight Design to tell the Lockwood experts what they wanted for a repair -- there is a difference.

I know this is over long and a bit detailed, but my experience likely is not unique in that any repair out of the ordinary must go through Flight Design and that is time consuming. I welcome queries. Right now Nancy and I are planning summer trips.

Thats a long time with no flying. dont think i could have handled it. Probably would have rented one just to get a fix. Hope everything turns out good for you guys with the repair. Keep us posted.