mdwflyer wrote:European Coastal have gotten their Canadian registered goose back up and running.
I actually talked to Mike Ingram at Victoria Air Maintenance Ltd about that over the last 2 weeks - apparently thanks to you, Mark. They are still working on formally "conforming" it to meet new EASA requirements for a fresh certificate of airworthiness. (Since Croatia only recently joined the European Union and came under EASA jurisdiction.)
Apparently some records were lost and they have to prove that the McKinnon STC to remove the aft cabin bulkhead was done correctly. In the meantime, even though it is still actually located in Croatia, they have re-registered it in Canada as
C-FMXW (with VAM as the nominal owner) until the conformity and airworthiness issues are fully resolved. (*Note that the previous Canadian registration it has been carrying all this time was not valid after it was officially de-registered in Canada in 2005 and
C-FVFU had actually been re-assigned to a different aircraft there.) In any case, Mike told me that he has plans to make another trip over to Croatia soon to finish up that work - and paperwork.
He also mentioned a mod to increase the seating capacity to 10 pax seats but I have never heard of such a thing pertaining to the Grumman G-21A. Some of the McKinnon conversions under
TC 4A24 were certified for more seats (9 in the G-21C & G-21E, 14 in the G-21D, and 10 in the G-21G - all including the pilot and co-pilot seats) but none of those conversions had anything to do with mods or alterations approved for use in the legacy Grumman G-21A series. According to TC 654, the G-21A was never approved for more than 8 seats total, also still including the pilot and co-pilot seats.