The JetStar Operators Group, made up of the owners and operators of most of the three dozen active Lockheed Model 1239 JetStar corporate aircraft in the US fleet, are asking the US National Transportation Safety Board to put pressure on the aircraft's certificate holder, Lockheed Martin.
At issue is Lockheed's apparent failure to address the root cause of a November 1998 JetStar accident in which the nose wheel steering actuator failed on landing, damaging the aircraft, but not injuring the occupants.
In its final report on the accident, the NTSB determined that the probable cause was the "steering actuator fatigue failure resulting from inadequate procedure documentation for the manufacturing process". In particular, investigators had found the drawing for the part to be unclear in key areas.
Despite that finding, Larry Simpkins, a JetStar operator and mechanic, says Lockheed has consistently attributed the issue to one of corrosion cracking, a problem that he said had been eliminated earlier in the fleet.
Simpkins contends that Lockheed had not corrected drawings cited in the NTSB report of the 1998 accident, and the same part failure caused the hull loss of another JetStar in 2006.
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© Larry SimpkinsLockheed built 204 JetStars between 1957 and the late 1970s |
The friction between the group and Lockheed is tied to a larger issue of life limits that Lockheed is attempting to place on several JetStar components as a result of failures and analysis by the company.
Other parts include the empennage pivot fitting, flap fittings, wing-attach bolts and engine-pylon bolts. Simpkins and others say life limits are unnecessary, and expenses and part availability would probably ground many otherwise airworthy JetStars.
The first purpose-built corporate aircraft, the JetStar first flew in September 1957. Lockheed built 204 JetStars through the late 1970s, including the more fuel-efficient, less noisy JetStar II version, with TFE731 turbofan engines in later years.
Source: Flight International
