Work Safe: Integrity in Aircraft Maintenance Aviation challenges us to prove ourselves each day. By Zac Noble Aviation maintenance has been raised as a possible contributing factor in an Apr. 10, 2025, air tour helicopter accident in the Hudson River near Jersey City, New Jersey. All six people onboard perished in the incident, in which the aircraft apparently broke apart in midair. The actual cause of the accident is unknown, as the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has not completed its investigation, and so any focus on maintenance as a causal factor is simply speculation. The helicopter model that crashed has one of the best safety records in vertical aviation. Nonetheless, this accident once again highlights that aircraft are designed, built, flown, and maintained by humans, and no machine is perfect. Even new aircraft off the same assembly line can exhibit discrepancies in performance within a few hours of operation. If an aircraft is flown and maintained within design specifications, you can’t draw a correlation between that aircraft’s operational readiness rate and its run time. I’ve had the honor of flying both new and old airframes. If they’re maintained properly, it’s difficult to tell the difference between the two once the new-leather smell has dissipated and the glossy factory paint has dulled. Trusting Your Teammates One way age can matter lies in how the aircraft has been operated and maintained. A new owner of an old aircraft can only hope the machine they just purchased has been flown and maintained to the guidelines of the pilot’s operating handbook or rotorcraft flight manual. I say “hope” because the aircraft’s safety and reliability depend on two factors. The first is the pilot’s integrity in accurately logging the aircraft’s flight data and any perceived issues. For many years, our industry had no onboard electronics to catalog events such as over-temps, over-torques, and times outside of prescribed limits. Rather, we relied on the pilot to self-report those events, as well as any issues with the aircraft’s equipage, systems, or performance. To obtain accurate data, it is essential that pilots treat this responsibility as one of their most important. Of course, integrity isn’t important only for pilots, which brings us to the second factor. When a mechanic or engineer signs the logbook confirming that a task has been done, everyone downstream of that action is trusting that it was performed per the maintenance manual, Instructions for Continued Airworthiness, or a means acceptable to the applicable aviation regulator. Recently, I learned of an aircraft purchase where the new owner bought the machine from someone in a nearby state. The aircraft had been recently serviced but needed further maintenance and an inspection. During the sale, the seller told the new owner the aircraft had had a fresh oil change performed, along with other maintenance. Upon inspecting the aircraft, the new owner’s mechanic discovered that the engine-oil filter hadn’t been changed in 10 years! Some other maintenance, it turned out, was poorly documented and incomplete. Do the Right Thing—Always In aviation, our integrity is regularly tested. Each preflight, logbook entry, or maintenance signoff—in fact, everything we do—prompts a question: should we do the right thing, even when no one else is watching? The accident reports tell us that the only acceptable answer is yes, always. Safety and people’s lives depend on it. Do the right thing, and be complete with your logbook entries. If you’re maintaining or inspecting the aircraft, be sure to enter into the maintenance record of the machine or component(s) the information required in 14 CFR 43.9 and 43.11, respectively. And of course, as 14 CFR 43.12 warns, never intentionally falsify a maintenance record. There isn’t enough time or money to rebuild every aircraft at each inspection. We count on the pilots who flew it and the mechanics who worked on it before us to have done their jobs correctly. Fugae tutum! Zac Noble is VAI’s director of flight operations and maintenance.
