Airworthiness Directives 2004 - Revocation and Remaking - Piper PA-31 Series Aeroplanes

The instrument bases itself on a small set of discrete legal and administrative concepts stated within the text. The central concept is an Airworthiness Directive. The instrument does not define "Airworthiness Directive" beyond using that phrase, but it treats ADs as discrete regulatory instruments that can be revoked and re-made. The instrument operates under the delegated power conferred by subregulation 39.001(1) of the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations 1998; the instrument expressly records that authority at the outset and identifies the delegate by name and role.

Revocation and remaking is the second main concept. The instrument effects revocation of the ADs listed in Schedule 1 and remakes each AD listed as a separate instrument and attached. The note appended to the instrument states that each attached AD is being re-made in exactly the same form as in the latest published edition. That establishes two linked propositions in the instrument: the content of the re-made ADs is identical to their latest published text, and the legal form of each AD after this instrument is a separate, attached instrument. The instrument thereby separates mechanical form (what instrument carries the text) from substantive content (the AD wording remains unchanged).

Schedule 1 is a third key concept. It is the enumerative list that both identifies the set of ADs being processed and, by annotation, records status markers such as amendment numbers and notes that some AD entries are "CANCELLED". The Schedule confines the scope of this instrument to Piper PA-31 series aeroplanes. The titles used in the Schedule convey the operational subject-matter each AD addresses: landing gear, control cables, elevator structure, fuel lines, alternator wiring, placards, retirement lives, and many other airworthiness-related items.

Delegation and agency action is the fourth concept visible in the text. The document records action by a named delegate of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority rather than by the Authority as a corporate body. The signature block shows administrative decision-making exercised through delegated statutory power under the cited subregulation.

The instrument therefore rests on a tight administrative design: use delegated power under a named subregulation to revoke an enumerated set of ADs and contemporaneously re-issue each as separate instruments in identical form, confined to a defined aircraft type, with an administrative note explaining that the substantive content is unchanged from the latest published editions.

The instrument’s scope is defined expressively by its Schedule: it applies to Airworthiness Directives listed for the Piper PA-31 series aeroplanes. That identifies owners, operators, maintenance organisations, certificated engineers, parts suppliers, and any other parties responsible for continuing airworthiness of Piper PA-31 series aircraft as the primary groups affected. The Schedule’s AD titles indicate the likely operational subsets among those parties: airframe and landing gear shops (entries with "landing gear", "door", "door latch", "gear selector", "actuator", "strut"), avionics and electrical maintainers (entries referencing "electrical wiring", "alternator switch", "electroluminescent panel inverters", "wiring and fuel line chafing"), engine/workshop teams (entries referring to "exhaust", "turbocharger", "engine control"), and those responsible for flight operations and placards (entries for "placard", "airspeed placard", "never exceed speed" noted as cancelled).

Because the instrument expressly remakes the ADs "as separate instruments", regulatory compliance and record-keeping falls on persons who must follow AD requirements under the applicable regulatory framework. The instrument itself does not list compliance obligations or which specific persons must perform the listed inspections or modifications. However, by operating on ADs that cover inspections, modifications, replacements and retirement lives, it affects those who would be required by the substantive AD texts to plan, schedule, fund, and execute those actions. The Schedule shows recurring themes: inspections, modifications, replacements, installations, retirement lives, and removals.

The document records a number of entries labelled "CANCELLED" within the Schedule. Those entries will be relevant to anyone tracking regulatory obligations, because they identify AD numbers that are no longer current in the list. For record-keeping, operators and maintenance organisations must note which AD numbers remain active and which have been cancelled, to avoid unnecessary compliance steps or to ensure they have not missed an obligation that remains in force.

Finally, the delegate and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority are the decision-makers recorded. The named delegate, David Alan Villiers, signs the instrument under the delegated power. The instrument thus affects not only regulated entities who must comply with ADs, but administrative records and legal references that cite AD numbers (for example, maintenance manuals, compliance logs, and continuing airworthiness records) because the instrument changes the form and catalogue location of the relevant ADs by revoking and re-making them.

The instrument itself is a vehicle for changing the legal form of specific Airworthiness Directives; it does not articulate the technical compliance steps or statutory culpabilities. The document’s operative directions are limited to two duties it imposes on the administration: to revoke the ADs listed in Schedule 1 and to make each listed AD a separate instrument and attach it. Those are administrative duties performed by the delegate under subregulation 39.001(1) of the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations 1998, as recorded in the instrument.

For regulated parties, the relevant duties and rights are embedded in the attached ADs rather than in the revocation/remaking instrument. The Schedule’s short titles indicate the types of obligations that those ADs impose: inspections, modifications, replacements, installations, removals and retirement lives. Practitioners should therefore treat the Schedule entries as signposts showing subject-matter; the precise duties (who must do what, to which aircraft serial numbers or configurations, within what timeframes, and to what standard) will be in the text of each attached AD as re-made.

The instrument’s note that "each attached Airworthiness Directive is being re-made in exactly the same form as appears in the latest published edition of the Directive" is critically relevant to rights and expectancies. Regulated parties may take that note to mean that any compliance timelines, exemptions, alternative methods of compliance, or required procedures that applied under the latest published edition continue unchanged in the new separate instrument. Conversely, rights that depend upon the previous legal form of an AD (for example, reliance on a revocation or amendment taking effect at a prior date) are affected because the listed ADs have been revoked and re-issued as separate instruments. The instrument itself does not create transitional rights or explicitly state grandfathering for compliance deadlines; the practitioner must verify transition mechanics in the attached AD texts.

The Schedule includes entries with amendment numbers. That records a history of prior modifications to the substantive ADs. For a regulated party, that history can affect rights such as the continued validity of previously-issued compliance approvals, the applicability of maintenance logbook entries, or the recognition of previously-approved alternative methods of compliance. But the instrument does not itself adjudicate those questions; it merely performs the administrative remaking while preserving the substantive wording, according to its note.

The presence of multiple entries labelled "CANCELLED" in the Schedule indicates that some AD numbers are recorded in the list for completeness but are currently cancelled. For parties relying on AD numbering to locate obligations, the right to clarity is facilitated only to the extent that the attached instruments or related records make active/cancelled status explicit. This revocation/remaking notice does not, in text other than the Schedule labels, elaborate whether cancelled ADs remain for historical reference only or are to be treated as non-operative.

The instrument does not itself set out penalties, sanctions, or the enforcement regime for non-compliance with the Airworthiness Directives listed. It is an administrative instrument that revokes and re-makes ADs; it does not include provisions on offences, penalties, inspector powers, or suspension/cancellation of certificates. The only statutory reference in the instrument is to the enabling subregulation, subregulation 39.001(1) of the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations 1998, which the delegate cites as the authority to act. The instrument therefore leaves any prosecutorial, administrative enforcement or sanctioning consequences to the wider regulatory framework referenced implicitly by the enabling provision.

Because the substantive compliance obligations that give rise to potential enforcement are contained in the individual ADs themselves, enforcement depends on the content of those attached ADs and the statutory enforcement machinery that applies under the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations and relevant aviation law. The remaking of each AD "in exactly the same form" as the latest published edition suggests that any enforcement elements that appear in the prior published ADs (for example, compliance dates, required reports, or conditions for alternative methods of compliance) are preserved, but the instrument does not restate them.

Practitioners and compliance officers should therefore treat this instrument as an administrative reclassification of ADs rather than a source of enforcement detail. To understand penalties and enforcement steps that follow from failing to comply with a given AD, one must consult: the operative text of each re-made AD (the attachments), the enabling provisions of the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations 1998 including the subregulation cited, and any other statutory or regulatory instruments that set out offences and enforcement processes for aviation safety. The instrument itself does not authorise or limit particular sanctions, nor does it claim to modify enforcement discretions conferred elsewhere.

Because the instrument revokes the previously-published ADs and remakes them as separate instruments, there is an implementation risk for enforcement practice if records or references continue to cite the earlier instrument formats. Enforcement practitioners should therefore verify that the correct, re-made AD instrument is cited when taking any follow-up compliance or enforcement action, and should confirm whether the attached re-made ADs preserve reporting channels or specified notification requirements that may trigger administrative follow-up.

The instrument declares its legal basis as subregulation 39.001(1) of the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations 1998. It does not, within its own text, quote that subregulation or set out its terms; it only records that the delegate is acting under that authority. Consequently, any interaction between this instrument and other regulatory or statutory provisions flows from that enabling connection rather than from language contained in the instrument itself.

The instrument effects an administrative change to the legal form of a set of ADs; that has a concrete interactional effect with other legal instruments and records that cross-reference AD numbers or rely on ADs for continuing airworthiness requirements. For example, maintenance manuals, continuing airworthiness records, operations manuals, certificate conditions, and other regulatory instruments that identify obligations by AD number or by the instrument that published the AD may need to be updated to reference the re-made standalone instruments. The instrument does not itself order such updates, but its effect creates a necessity for cross-references to be checked.

The Schedule lists ADs that include amendment numbers. Those amendment annotations indicate prior interactions between the specific ADs and amendment instruments. By remaking each AD in exactly the same form as the latest published edition (as noted), this instrument maintains substantive continuity with that prior amendment history, while changing the instrument in which the words appear. That administrative move preserves substantive interactions (for example, where an AD exempts a class of parts or prescribes alternative compliance pathways) but changes the locus for legal citation.

The instrument does not mention any interaction with criminal law, civil liability regimes, contractual law or insurance. Any such interactions , for example, whether non-compliance with an AD affects insurance coverage, or creates civil liability , are not addressed in the text and therefore remain dependent on the broader legal context in which AD compliance is situated. Similarly, the instrument does not purport to displace or modify other regulations; it operates as a targeted administrative action under the single cited subregulation.

Finally, because certain entries in the Schedule are annotated "CANCELLED", the instrument interacts with the body of ADs by recording that certain AD numbers are not active. That affects the legal corpus that practitioners must consult when determining applicable continuing airworthiness obligations. The instrumental interaction is therefore primarily administrative and epistemic: it changes where and how the ADs are formally located and catalogued, while, according to the attached note, leaving substantive AD text intact.

The instrument itself is dated 20 December 2004 and is signed by David Alan Villiers as a delegate of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. That is the immediate historic marker for this specific revocation and remaking action.

Within Schedule 1, many entries include amendment annotations such as "Amdt 1", "Amdt 2", "Amdt 3", and so on up to "Amdt 10" in the case of "Airframe Retirement Lives AD/PA-31/37 Amdt 10". Those amendment numbers record a prior amendment history for the individual Airworthiness Directives; the instrument does not reproduce the textual history of those amendments, but the presence of amendment annotations signals that the substantive ADs have been previously modified and that the versions being re-made reflect the latest published edition including those amendments.

The instrument’s note that each attached Airworthiness Directive is being re-made "in exactly the same form as appears in the latest published edition of the Directive" functions as an administrative preservation clause. It connects the remade instruments to the most recent public editions of those ADs as of the date of remaking. Thus the amendment history embedded in each AD up to the latest published edition is preserved in the remade instrument, according to the instrument’s self-description.

Several Schedule entries are labelled "CANCELLED". That annotation is part of the historical record retained in the Schedule and indicates that some AD numbers have previously been cancelled or were already in cancelled status at the time this Schedule was compiled. The instrument does not explain the reasons or dates for those cancellations, nor does it provide a separate amendment chronology for cancellations.

The instrument itself is an administrative housekeeping measure dated 20 December 2004. It performs a single action point in the documentary history of these ADs: revocation of the listed ADs in their prior instrument form and remaking each as a separate attached instrument that reproduces the latest published text. Any further amendment history after the date on this instrument would be reflected in subsequent AD amendments, which are outside the scope of the present text.

Practitioners relying on historical amendment context should therefore consult: the amendment annotations in the Schedule as initial pointers; the attached re-made ADs for the substantive text that incorporates prior amendments; and the publication records of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority to reconstruct the dates and content of prior amendments and cancellations. The present instrument does not itself provide a comprehensive amendment timeline beyond the amendment annotations visible in Schedule 1 and the document date and signature.

The instrument includes no litigation history, judicial references, or citations to cases. It contains only administrative action: a signature block for a delegate of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, an enabling subregulation reference, a Schedule enumerating ADs, and a note that attached ADs are being re-made in identical form to their latest published edition.

Because the text contains no references to judicial proceedings, appeals, determinations or past litigation involving these ADs or the delegate’s power under subregulation 39.001(1), there is nothing in the instrument that records any litigation record. The absence of litigation references in the instrument means that it does not purport to settle extant legal disputes, nor to summarise prior litigation affecting these ADs.

For practitioners researching judicial treatment, this instrument functions as an administrative source whose litigation relevance must be established by independent search of judicial records and case law outside the instrument text. The instrument itself gives no guidance on whether disputes exist regarding the ADs listed, whether any decisions concerning these particular ADs have been litigated, or whether any judicial review of the delegate’s action has been pursued. The Schedule’s cancellation annotations and amendment numbers suggest a substantive and administrative history, but no adjudicative history is recorded in the text provided.

Several practical traps are visible from the instrument text for lawyers, compliance officers and maintenance managers who work with continuing airworthiness obligations.

1. Administrative form versus substantive content. The instrument revokes and re-makes ADs but, per the note, keeps the substantive text "in exactly the same form". That preserves content but changes the legal instrument in which that content is housed. Failing to update citations, maintenance records and compliance references to the new separate instruments could cause confusion. The remade ADs must be consulted directly for operative requirements; relying on the previous instrument citation may be misleading.

2. Cancelled entries in the Schedule. Multiple AD numbers in the Schedule are annotated "CANCELLED". It is not self-evident from this revocation/remaking notice whether the cancellation precedes this instrument or whether the entry is included for record-keeping. Practitioners should not assume that a "CANCELLED" annotation means the matter is of no operational consequence without checking the attached instruments and the latest published register.

3. Attachment reliance. The instrument states that each Airworthiness Directive mentioned in Schedule 1 is attached and re-made. The text provided here does not include those attachments. Consequently, a reader using only the revocation/remaking notice lacks the operative compliance language, effectivity dates, specified serial-number applicability, and any AMOC (alternative method of compliance) provisions that may be in the ADs. This instrument therefore requires consultation of attachments to know duties.

4. Amendment numbers dispersed. The Schedule contains many different amendment numbers attached to individual ADs. Those amendment annotations indicate a complex pre-history for some ADs. Practitioners seeking to trace changes or to verify the "latest published edition" must ensure they have the final consolidated text of each AD as of the date this instrument re-made them.

5. Record-keeping and cross-references. Because ADs are often cross-referenced in maintenance manuals, MELs (minimum equipment lists), airworthiness limitation sections, and contractual documents, changing the instrument form of the ADs may produce multiple divergent references in documentation. There is an administrative cost to align documentation and audit trails to the re-made instruments.

6. No enforcement text here. The revocation/remaking instrument contains no enforcement provisions, no references to reporting requirements, and no specification of how enforcement will be handled where record-keeping inconsistencies arise from the remaking. That places a compliance burden on operators to determine enforcement consequences from the attached ADs and the enabling regulations.

7. Narrow aircraft scope. The Schedule is confined to Piper PA-31 series aeroplanes. Any user who operates mixed fleets must not extrapolate the remedial or administrative approach here to other types without checking whether similar revocation/remaking instruments exist for other aircraft types.

Being alert to those "gotchas" will help avoid mis-citation, missed inspections or modifications, and gaps between procedural compliance and paper trails that prove compliance.

This instrument does not itself impose technical compliance tasks; it is an administrative revocation and remaking mechanism. Compliance therefore requires a two-step practical approach grounded in the instrument’s terms.

Step 1: Identify and obtain the attached re-made ADs. The instrument states that each AD in Schedule 1 is attached and re-made in exactly the same form as the latest published edition. To understand precise obligations, persons responsible for continuing airworthiness must obtain the text of each attached AD as remade. The Schedule provides the AD numbers and short titles (for example, "Nose Landing Gear Idler Link Assembly - Modification AD/PA-31/1", "Aileron Cable - Inspection AD/PA-31/3", "Airframe Retirement Lives AD/PA-31/37 Amdt 10", etc.) which should be used to locate the attached separate instruments. Do not rely on the revocation/remaking notice alone for compliance steps.

Step 2: Audit active versus cancelled ADs and update records. The Schedule lists some ADs as "CANCELLED". You must verify which ADs are active, which are cancelled, and whether any cancellation followed a later instrument separate from this notice. Update aircraft continuing airworthiness records, maintenance planning documents and compliance registers to reference the re-made AD instrument numbers and to record compliance actions that satisfy the substantive requirements of each attached AD.

Once the attached AD texts are obtained, implement their requirements in accordance with their operative provisions. Because the Schedule shows a mixture of inspections, modifications, replacements, installations, retirements and removals across airframe, systems, powerplant and flight controls, the practical compliance steps will include the following actions as required by each AD:

• Confirm applicability by aircraft serial number, model and configuration as specified in the attached AD.
• Identify compliance intervals and deadlines in the re-made AD and schedule inspections/modifications accordingly.
• Ensure appropriately rated engineers and certifying staff perform or supervise the work, and that codified procedures are followed and documented.
• Use specified parts, service bulletins or procedures referenced in the attached ADs; where ADs reference external documents or manufacturer service bulletins, obtain and apply the latest approved versions cited in the AD text.
• Record all compliance actions in the aircraft maintenance records and make entries that identify the AD number and the method and date of compliance, consistent with continuing airworthiness record requirements.
• If an AD provides for alternative methods of compliance, obtain prior approval where the AD requires it; if the AD sets reporting obligations, file required notifications with the delegated authority as specified.

Administrative tasks tied to the remaking must also be completed:

• Update internal document indexes, manuals and compliance trackers to reference the re-made separate AD instruments instead of the earlier instrument forms.
• Where contracts, leases, or insurance policies reference specific ADs, notify counterparties of the remaking action and provide them with the text of the re-made ADs if required by contract terms.
• For cancelled AD entries, ensure that any records of past compliance are retained for audit and that no further work is carried out on a cancelled obligation unless otherwise required by a different operative directive.

Finally, because the revocation/remaking instrument uses delegated authority under subregulation 39.001(1) of the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations 1998, parties uncertain about interpretation or applicability should seek clarification from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority or the delegate specified, referencing the instrument date and the AD numbers in Schedule 1. The instrument preserves substantive AD wording according to its note, but practical compliance turns on the text of each re-made AD and any cross-referenced documents they incorporate by reference.