Reinforcement Trusses Under The Front Seat May Have Been Omitted

The FAA has issued a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB) for an airworthiness concern regarding the possible omission of the two reinforcement trusses in the folding front seat bottom in American Champion Aircraft Corporation (ACAC) Models.

The affected aircraft include:

• All Model 7EC, serial numbers 1000-2006 through 1032-2011
• All Model 7ECA, serial numbers 1355-95 through 1408-2011
• All Model 7GCAA, serial numbers 400-97 through 520-2010
• All Model 7GCBC, serial numbers 1200-94 through 1466-2012
• All Model 8KCAB, serial numbers 643-90 through 1114-2012
• All Model 8GCBC, serial numbers 361-92 through 548-2012
• All older 7AC, 7ACA, S7AC, 7BCM, 7CCM, S7CCM, 7DC, S7DC, 7EC, S7EC, 7ECA, 7FC, 7GC, 7GCA, 7GCAA, 7GCB, 7GCBA, 7GCBC, 7HC, 7JC, 7KC, 7KCAB, 8KCAB, and 8GCBC with Folding Front Seats that have complied with AD 89-18-06 via replacement seat frame 7-1513 (adjustable) or 4-1454 (fixed) before the date of this letter.

This SAIB resulted from an incident where a new American Champion Model 8KCAB (Decathlon) experienced a failed seat back while conducting aerobatic maneuvers. The pilot was able to recover control of the airplane and land safely. Subsequent inspection of the airplane revealed that the seat tubing had failed in the same location on both sides of the seat.

Further investigation found that two reinforcement trusses had not been welded into the seat frame during manufacturing. American Champion isolated the seat to a batch of 10 seats that were the most recent batch manufactured. Inspections by American Champion and the Minneapolis Manufacturing Inspection District Office have not found any seats from previous batches with the trusses missing. The FAA does not currently have any indication that there are any seats in use missing the trusses. However, the purpose of this SAIB is to alert owners and operators to the issue and substantiate that all applicable fielded airplanes have the trusses installed.

The FAA recommends that all ACAC model airplanes, specified in the list above, complete the one time inspection procedure specified in American Champion service letter number 437. If a reinforcement truss is found to be missing please provide the airplane model, serial number, and registration number to Wesley Rouse.

(Decathlon pictured in file photo.)

FMI: SAIB