Hit 5,000 hours on one box without a single pull and it got me thinking

I was just doing a routine check on a Collins 900 something that's been flying charter out of McCarran for years and I realized I had rolled over 5,000 hours on this one unit without ever having to pull it for a bench repair. That felt like a big deal honestly because when I first started in the late 90s you were lucky to get 1,500 hours out of a nav box before something drifted. The old analog stuff just had so many more failure points and you'd be swapping cards every other month. Now with digital and solid state everything it's like these units just run and run until the airframe gives out. It's wild how much reliability has changed in just 20 years. Has anyone else noticed a specific part going way longer than you expected?

2 comments

2 Comments

alicecooper19d agoTop Commenter

That kind of reliability really changes how you think about maintenance schedules... you almost start wondering if you're wasting time pulling perfectly good boxes just because the logbook says it's time. The solid state stuff seems like it could keep going until the aluminum around it starts cracking. It's a good problem to have but it makes you rethink the old rules of thumb for sure.

thomas.parker19d ago

I had the exact same thing happen on a Collins 700 series box out of a King Air that runs medevac out here in the desert. That one went past 6,000 hours before I finally pulled it for a routine overhaul, and it still tested fine on the bench. The older units from the 80s and 90s would start giving you weird heading errors or just flat out die after 1,800 hours or so. I remember swapping so many of those old analog VOR heads that I could do it blindfolded. Now these solid state boxes just sit there and work, no drift, no fuss. It really makes you wonder what the limit is on these things.