Does anyone know if there are any Mallards currently "airworthy" and flyable in the US?
I never really had the "need" to do so, so I only recently read through the text of
AD 2006-01-51 which effectively grounded all Mallards in the US pending a hugely invasive and comprehensive inspection of their wing center sections. I once heard that all "Commercial" Mallards were grounded pending development of new more comprehensive service instructions from Frakes, but this AD does not differentiate between Commercial and Private G-73 Mallard aircraft. It applies to "
all Frakes Aviation (Gulfstream American) Model G-73 (Mallard) series airplanes; and Model G-73 airplanes that have been converted to have turbine engines; certificated in any category."
The full text of the AD is here:
http://www.airweb.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgAD.nsf/0/84f647438cf632c6862570e70062a9e6/$FILE/2006-01-51%20(Emergency).pdf I was just wondering if anyone here knew for a fact that any US-registered G-73 Mallard aircraft in particular had already complied with this AD and had been approved for return to service accordingly.
By comparison, Precision Valve Corporation's
N777PV (
G-73T s/n
J-49) has been listed for sale for a couple of years now with a note that it is still in need of approximately $750K worth of wing center section repairs.
On a side note, the identification of the aircraft in the AD is not correct. Frakes Aviation may be the current TC Holder and Gulfstream American may be a former TC Holder, but all of the actual G-73 aircraft ever built were built by the
Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation of Bethpage, NY. As such and per FAR 45.13(a) they are all still just "
Grumman" G-73 Mallard aircraft because that is who actually "built" them - a fact that does not change with the transfer of ownership of the type certificate, A-783. So now, while the "design" and the TC may belong to Frakes Aviation, the aircraft themselves are still properly identified as "
Grumman" G-73 Mallards.