Crummy Grumman Seaplane Lasted Only 58 Years

Imagine going before a jury and saying “This airplane was so badly designed that it survived only 58 years of salt water corrosion and pounding through rough waves at 80 knots.”  That’s the argument some folks in Florida are making against Northrop Grumman in connection with the 2005 crash of a 1947 Grumman seaplane.  More:  Miami Herald.

[This ties in loosely with my economic recovery plan.]

6 thoughts on “Crummy Grumman Seaplane Lasted Only 58 Years

  1. A travesty of justice. Normally I am on the other side of these debates, but in this case, Chalk’s should never have been using a 60-year old plane, and AIG should never have insured Chalk’s. Airliners.net has photos of the planes:

    http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?aircraft_genericsearch=Grumman+G-73+Mallard&airlinesearch=&countrysearch=&specialsearch=&daterange=&keywords=&range=&sort_order=&page_limit=15&thumbnails=&calccount=1371033&truecount=false&engine_version=6.0

  2. This sort of suit-happy behavior led to Beech recommending to the FAA that the (airworthiness certificates?) be canceled for V-tail Bonanza’s and the Model-18. “Mods” to those two aircraft, plus massive lobbying, kept them flying.

    But in the future, honestly I believe we will see manufacturers “pulling the (airworthiness) certificates” when the perceived service-life of specific planes has been reached.

    That Chalks carried $50-million+ in liability insurance is testament to the fact that “somebody” thought this operation “risky business”.

  3. Paul: The fact that they got $50 mil in liability insurance is not evidence that they were perceived as high risk, rather the opposite. Though, actually, Chalk’s turned out to be a better risk than AIG itself. Chalk’s didn’t require a $100 billion federal bailout…

  4. It reads more like incompetence on the part of AIG that they offered cover in the first place… how many such payouts does it take to make an insurer fold?

    I’m skeptical about the way insurance companies work. It seems they cover anything with minimal research and wait for the claims to come in to give data for their people to base future premiums on. In cases like this they should be employing engineering professionals to properly assess potential problems. As for the insurance they seem to have been offering on financial products, some kind of prior risk assessment should have been possible. They make themselves prone to collapse when a new type of problem comes about.

    AIG suing Northrop Grumman on this matter (their stupidity) is another colossal waste of money.

  5. I’m with the other Paul. If these bozos win, you can expect every still living aircraft company asking the FAA to ground their old planes, or issuing a billion SBs in order to force them on the ground.

  6. I thought there was an 18 year limit on manufacturers liability. There are four exceptions. The only exception that this might possibly fall under is: “prove, that the manufacturer “knowingly misrepresented to the [FAA], or concealed or withheld from the [FAA], required information that is material and relevant” during the airworthiness certification process”.

    The article below seems to support this.

    http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6367/is_7_74/ai_n28814467/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1

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