A recent FAA Safety Alert For Operators (Safo) targeting work done by U.S. Aircraft Instruments between April 1998 and July 9, 2009 "is about payback," Jeff Bell, president of U.S. Aircraft Instruments, told AIN. It identifies discrepancies that led to an emergency revocation of the repair station certificate held by the now defunct Hammonton, N.J. company. Some of the concerns addressed in the Safo include: failure to properly calibrate instruments used in aircraft certification; work done outside the scope of the repair station ratings; failure to use current technical data; and falsification of calibration records. Bell contests those points and suggests FAA inspectors "decided to go beyond their limits and caused nothing but aggravation."
One issue Bell addressed was the FAA's contention that one of his altimeter manuals was out of date. "That manual had not changed in seven years, then the company changed the part numbering system and made the pictures clearer; that's all," he said. "You can still order parts under the old numbers and the maintenance steps are exactly the same. There's no functional difference."
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