Broken Cessna Wing Strut?

CFI A&P said:
If wing strut failure bothers you, may I suggest these two things for you: Piper and Beechcraft.
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Right... send them to the plane that has a single spar with a life limit on it... Not sure about Beech though.

And plus, if you dont want a strut, just go get a Cardinal or 210.

After doing a fix search online I found this.

There have been about 45,000 Cessna 172's built over more than 55 yrs.

They have been flown millions of hours in all kinds of weather by mostly low-time amateur pilots.

Some airframes have flown in excess of 30,000 hrs.

They have all been built to utility category standards.

There have been two cases of structural failure resulting in fatalities.

Both of these were caused by abrupt pushovers, in good weather, to the inverted, for unknown reasons.

No other airplane ever built can match that record for structural integrity.

And don't forget, the 172 is the only airplane ever to successfully penetrate Soviet air defenses all the way to Moscow.
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Hacker15e said:
There are lots of things in aviation to legitimately spend your limited "fear" capital on; you don't need to waste it on things that will probably never happen.
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I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times:

"The least reliable component in any aircraft is the loose nut in the left seat."

Structural failure in flight isn't even on my radar of things to worry about. However, that guy in the mirror has tried to kill me on several occasions.
 
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RDoug said:
Translation: You're worrying about the wrong part. It's the tail that's going to kill you!

Sorry. Couldn't resist. I'll go back to my room now.
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In other words, it's not the front that's going to fall off.


Roger Roger said:
However, in the little skimming I've done of in flight breakup accident reports in an overload situation a wing or portion of a wing seems to generally be the first to go at least on small GA.

As others have said, you have to have either serious upset (like complete spatial disorientation or full-on monster thunderstorm encounter) or intentional maneuvering to break these aircraft. For the most part primary structure is absurdly overbuilt and even after decades and 10s of thousands of hours they retain an astonishing amount of structural integrity.
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I recall reading that the during an inflight breakup, such as flying through a storm, it's usually the negative load limit that gets exceeded.
 
It is true that the tail is the section of aircraft where we generally find fatigue damage first in propeller GA land. I made the mistake once of watching the horizontal of the Navajo while doing power on stalls. NEVER. AGAIN. However, in the little skimming I've done of in flight breakup accident reports in an overload situation a wing or portion of a wing seems to generally be the first to go at least on small GA.


NEVER AGAIN? How bad was it? What did it look like?
 
Tyler Pinkerton said:
Right... send them to the plane that has a single spar with a life limit on it... Not sure about Beech though.

And plus, if you dont want a strut, just go get a Cardinal or 210.

After doing a fix search online I found this.
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That post was intended to be humorous.

Not every Piper has a spar life limit, Beech T-34s had a spar issue, that has been resolved with various AMOCs.

The strut free Cessnas have had their fair share too. C210 has spar ADs, as well as the Cardinal, and even the 300 and 400 series twins have repetitive spar inspections.

These are all machines, no different than a car, a vacuum cleaner, a lawnmower. They all need maintenance, the maintenance just varies depending on the operating environment and manner in which it is used.
 
JayAlarm said:
I want to really get rid of this irrational fear that is always on my mind when I am up in the air. I have not read anywhere about a wing strut failing on a Cessna, but what is the outcome if a strut were to fail? This is obviously not going to have any positive outcome right? I know this is a ridiculous question too
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@JayAlarm

Were you able to get all of your various medical issues sorted out and are you able now to get a First Class Medical? Did you finally see an AME.......how did that go? Have you started taking flying lessons yet?
 
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JayAlarm said:
I want to really get rid of this irrational fear that is always on my mind when I am up in the air. I have not read anywhere about a wing strut failing on a Cessna, but what is the outcome if a strut were to fail? This is obviously not going to have any positive outcome right? I know this is a ridiculous question too
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FWIW I've never seen one land with a broken strut.
 
1. Just look at the Cessna 177, no struts and no problems!

2. It sounds like you have some of the same fear I had when I started flying... what if catastrophic failure happens, what if that terrible accident happens. I talked to a psychologist about it, he said... why are you worrying about things that can go wrong that are out of your control? Why don't you ask yourself, what can go right? You takeoff, you fly safely, you land. That's what can go right, and that's what happens 99.9% of the time.

Yes, maintain extreme vigilance as any pilot should, but do not WORRY about things out of your control (like random airframe failure within the envelope of the aircrafts limitations)
 
JayAlarm said:
NEVER AGAIN? How bad was it? What did it look like?
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Hacker15e said:
Lots of movement, flexing, and vibration. It has the visual appearance of not being fastened very well to the empennage or being very structurally strong.
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Heck, watching the C-5s wingtip flapping in turbulence was an eye opener. I've been told that they can sway up to 10 ft.


Here is the video of the 777 wing being tested to failure. It took it's designed load + 50% more which was the goal of the builders. Failure happened at 154% of the design limit loading.


@JayAlarm you need to focus on mastering your skill as an aviator because the overwhelming data shows that you, the pilot, are the weak link in the airplane (same is true for me).

Focus on what you can control, not on what you can't. United 232, Aloha 243, the DHL plane in Baghdad, and Airways 1549 have proven that even completely unforeseen failures can be saved by skilled pilots.
 
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In 1983 an F-15 of the Israeli AF collided with a Skyhawk during training. The Skyhawk blew away but the pilot abandoned it peacefully. The F-15 lost it's right wing, but the pilot Ziv Nadivi couldnt see it.......

 
Just of note, the photos are real in that segment, but all the video is "re-created" and CGI'd. It is from "Heavy Metal: F-15", which was made back in 2003 and has aired on Discovery, History channel, and a couple other outlets.
 
Ive seen several 207s hit the ground (the aftermath anyway) . The two things that (almost) never bend are the wing struts and the gear legs. Ive seen a couple wrecks where the the airplane ends up a mangled mess but everyone walks away and the two things that are intact are the cabin and the wings struts. Don't worry about wing struts dude
 
Romulus said:
Ive seen several 207s hit the ground (the aftermath anyway) . The two things that (almost) never bend are the wing struts and the gear legs. Ive seen a couple wrecks where the the airplane ends up a mangled mess but everyone walks away and the two things that are intact are the cabin and the wings struts. Don't worry about wing struts dude
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I believe the strongest part of any Cessna Single is the newer style Landing gear.

At the flight school I flew and worked at, In Jan 09 they had record low temperatures. We have a big hangar with a 60-70 x 20 foot bi-fold door on it. Well one of the cables snapped which caused the others to fail and the door dropped down onto the 172R they were pushing out by hand. It landed right at the rear window frame just behind a student who was pushing the plane on the strut. The door ended up resting on the plane with the gear slightly compressed. When they lifted the door off of it, the plane sprung right back up.

The insurance company wrote off the plane, but one of our mechanics bought it to rebuild by splicing on a new tail section from a plane that a initial student totaled by porpoising it to the point the nose gear collapsed and totaled the front end... There was no damage to the landing gear box from what I was told.
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PropSettin' said:
1. Just look at the Cessna 177, no struts and no problems!

2. It sounds like you have some of the same fear I had when I started flying... what if catastrophic failure happens, what if that terrible accident happens. I talked to a psychologist about it, he said... why are you worrying about things that can go wrong that are out of your control? Why don't you ask yourself, what can go right? You takeoff, you fly safely, you land. That's what can go right, and that's what happens 99.9% of the time.

Yes, maintain extreme vigilance as any pilot should, but do not WORRY about things out of your control (like random airframe failure within the envelope of the aircrafts limitations)
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Thank you for a decent response. This gave me some relaxation honestly. I do appreciate it!
 
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