Remember a few days ago when I told you that the Piper Warrior I am scheduled to fly was damaged? Well, I’ve been thinking about the situation for a few days and I’ve come to the decision that I am going to make a change in aircraft to the Cessna 172R. I sort of consider myself a low-wing kinda guy, so this decision came with some reluctance on my part.
Back to the Warrior for a minute; It turns out that the damage was relatively minor, and they are currently working on the repairs. The problem is that they are estimating the repairs will take two weeks, which as I said is just an estimate. With repairs such as this, two weeks can quickly grow to three, then to four and so on, and I am not sure I want to fly the older Warrior in the meantime. It’s not that I dislike the older Warrior as an airplane, I just think its instrumentation is a bit worn out and outdated for IFR work.
So why change to the Cessna 172? Well, it has more to do with the aircraft availability and scheduling flexibility than it does with the anything directly related to the Cessna or Warrior. Let me elaborate. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the flight school has two Warriors, one newer and one older, and all my lessons from this point forward are scheduled in the newer well equipped one. Practically speaking, they really have only one Warrior as far as I am concerned. This means that any time it has a mechanical issue or gets damaged, as it did this past weekend, I am without an airplane to fly. With the goal of flying twice a week for the next few months, this plan is highly dependent on the health and availability of that Warrior and I am not sure if that dependency is such a good idea.
