New Audit Shows NHTSA Failed To Implement A Number of Recommendations

Canada's waterbomber fleet These guys Manitoba's fleet is 40 years old While Quebec's youngest fleet is also at 40 years old while its oldest is 53 years old.     Spain, Greece and France also have the same age range as Quebec's.  The older version which is the CL-215,  is 50 years plus in service for all that use it. They are still flying.  The next gen CL 415 is 30-40 years in service for all fleet users.  Canadair/Bombardier has sold the license to Viking and they are currently working on updating the airplane. It is called the CL 515.   European users are desperately wanting to replace their fleets.  Deliveries of the new CL 515 is said to be in early 2026.  With the water bombers, its not just cycles that put pressure on the sheet metal for metal fatigue. Its the weight of the water itself taking off from a lake. But mostly, when the water gets released.  HUGE amounts of pressure stresses  the structure when the water is released and all that weight that is released instantly and is no more.  

I also like black cats. I flew on a 747-400 within the last year or two.  I think it was about 25 years old.  It's an incredible machine.  I'm always a happy camper (without a Subaru) when I'm aboard one. 

@A Horse With No Name @oldshurst442 You guys are correct, cycle of take off and landing more than age. I should have expanded myself as my brother inlaw is a manager at Boeing with many patents for his specialty which is the airplane engines on the 737, 757, 777, 787 and the king 747. He has stated that the force of the engines cause fatigue in ALL aircrafts that hit 10 years and depending on the flying they have done, passenger versus freight, while a plane can go 20 or 30 years, many should have a very close inspection at 10 years for corrosion, metal fatigue, etc. Could be one reason some airline companies retire their aircraft after 10 years rather than continue to fly them.  Many things make up the age of an aircraft and years is only 1 little part of it, Force makes up a much bigger part.  Thank you for pointing out what I failed to expand on in my original post.

As one who deals with AI daily, building training, coding for data lakes to help others understand their data and what it can do for them, I have come to one reason for turning off copilot, the attempt that it makes over and over in correcting my writing and word use when it does not understand technical terms, legal terms, medical terms and then changes the whole meaning of a sentence due to the changes if I do not catch it. AI bots are great for helping find info on processes and configuration of a product such as our Dell PowerScale OneFS filer or our ObjectScale Object storage devices so that admins can quickly get the instructions on how to configure features. Otherwise, the rest of AI trying to tell me how I should do something makes it annoying and worse yet is the incredible amount of memory / CPU cycles it takes that I would rather use on other things that I do with my computer. Personally, I wish AI bots would not use any resources until I click on it and want it to work, once I close it, it should totally turn off rather than idle in the background listening to you.

Yes and ummmmm...no.  Yes.   Metal fatigue is a very real thing in aviation.  Its more about how many times the sheet metal has expanded and contracted  under stress rather than the age of the airplane itself.  10 years is somewhat too young for an airplane to be retired as airplanes are engineered fly double and even triple that age.  Unless of course the airplane in question has taken off, flown and landed enough times that would equal its maximum lifespan in 10 years.   This latest accident, UPS had a 34 year old McDonnel-Douglas MD-11 flying around.  Now...at 34 years of age, this airplane should been of concern... yes.   Like I said, airplanes' lifespans reach 30 years.  Sometimes more than that if maintenance is done properly and rigorously.   Using google and Wikipedia, if fact, 2 months prior, the airplane in question HAD been grounded for 6 weeks because cracks were found in the fuel tanks. Corrosion was also found in the structural beams in its fuselage. Repairs were made.  However, with airplanes, age is not a criteria for maintenance. But hours of flight and "cycles".   A cycle is 1 take-off and 1 landing sequence.  The airplane had logged 21000 and change cycles and the maintenance threshold for what had ultimately failed in the airplane was not due until 28 000 and 29 000 cycles.  Now...at 34 years old, maybe more vigilance was needed... This is how the airplane safety industry works. It takes an accident to amend and/or instate new safety regulations.  Maybe with this accident, NTSB will implement an age criteria too alongside flight hours and cycles.  At age 30 and a more rigorous inspection is to happen and not rely solely on cycles and flight hours.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPS_Airlines_Flight_2976 The aircraft, N259UP, was a 34-year-old McDonnell Douglas MD-11F with manufacturer serial number 48417. The aircraft was first delivered to Thai Airways International in 1991 with the registration HS-TME,[7] after which it was converted to a cargo aircraft and delivered to UPS Airlines in 2006. It had flown 21,043 cycles and for about 92,992 hours,[8] and was equipped with three General Electric CF6-80C2D1F engines.[9][10][11] The last visual inspections of the left pylon aft mount were performed in October 2021. More rigorous "Special Detailed Inspections" for the mount lugs and wing clevis were not yet due, as the aircraft's 21,043 accumulated cycles were well below the 28,000 and 29,200 cycle thresholds required for those checks. Two months before the crash, it had been grounded for six weeks to repair a cracked fuel tank, and corrosion was later found along two structural beams in the fuselage. The aircraft re-entered service a few weeks before the crash.[12]