Back when I was still working for Shell Oil, I attended a number of state aviation maintenance symposiums every year.
Most of the symposiums would have social functions in the evenings. And that’s when many of us would get together and start telling war stories about our latest legal cases.
I would usually relate Shell’s case about grease in a helicopter rotor bearing. It concerns a military helicopter that was flying along when a bearing on the tail rotor drive shaft locked up, disabling the tail rotor.
According to experts at the trial, this model of helicopter will fly safely without a tail rotor if the pilot keeps the forward air speed up and then lands it like a fixed-wing aircraft. But the pilot panicked and went to hover, which spun the aircraft and killed all on board.
The experts then looked into what caused the bearing failure.
It seems that the failed bearing had been removed from another aircraft. It was inspected, cleaned, repacked, and put in storage.
But they were out of the usual oil paper to wrap it in, so they used a regular paper towel, put it in a plastic bag, and put it back into storage.
During storage, the paper towel wicked most of the oil out of the bearing. It was then pulled from storage and installed on the helicopter without the proper inspections discovering that there was almost no lubricant on the bearing. Without the lubricant, it failed.
The lawyers could not sue the pilot, the technician who installed the bearing, or the military. So, they sued the airframe manufacturer, the bearing manufacturer, the grease manufacturer, plus a host of others — including Shell, even though the failed bearing was lubricated with a competitor’s grease.
We got sued because we had a product listed on the military’s Qualified Products List (QPL) for that application and the lawyers thought our product might have accidentally been used.
We hired an outside law firm — for more than $40,000 — and got the case dismissed.
I assume most of you think $40,000 is nothing to a company like Shell, but expenses like this go into the pricing of all general aviation products that you buy.
That leads me to wondering about unleaded avgas.
Well, actually the legal system and its impact on general aviation’s transition to unleaded fuel.
The first big problem is that this is going to be a total change to GA’s fuel with 100LL going away and only unleaded 100 octane fuels available. This means the government is forcing a total change and so any problem that happens after this change will be blamed on the new fuel.
There may also be two or three different fuels with each approved to a different specification.
And not all of the fuels may be approved by the various manufacturers. In addition, we have a lot of “orphan” engines for which the manufacturers are no longer in business, so there is no one to approve the new fuel.
There is also the concern that the different fuels will not be compatible with each other in all of the different applications. If there was a failure, how will we determine which fuel caused the problem?
Another big concern is the exhaust valve recession problems when unleaded fuels are used. This is going to be a large problem for new engine manufacturers and also rebuilders. When these engines start out with new cylinders and no existing lead coating, the chances of recession are much greater than for high-time engines.
What is the answer?
I don’t know, but it looks like the present plan is to throw the different unleaded fuel candidates out there with whatever approval they so choose.
When there is a problem with the transition to unleaded avgas, maybe those affected will sue the EPA or the FAA. But more realistically they will sue everyone from the airplane manufacturers to the fuel distributors, letting the courts sort it out to determine the winners and losers.
Unfortunately, I don’t think this is going to turn out well for the general aviation community.
Leave a Reply