Thomas Joseph Love

The procedure described to find the spar crack is unnecessary, dangerous, and unnecessarily expensive. The elevators SHOULD NOT be removed from the airplane. The procedure should be: 1. Removing the elevator fiberglass tip, 2. Using standard lighting and direct viewing through the rib tooling holes with a borescope inserted aft of the rib, accomplish a thorough inspection. This procedure is simple, inexpensive and will not damage the elevator. Most importantly, this procedure would have identified every cracked elevator rib found so far. All of the reported cracks giving rise to the FAA's action were discovered by visual external inspection and/or internal inspection using borescopes. No cracks have been reported that were only discoverable by disassembly of the elevator and removal of the fitting. Most importantly, on those planes which have had their elevators removed, no cracks have been found that would not have been found using the procedure described above.