This time it is not due to any one particular incident, but from what I gather CTC had satisfied themselves that the problems had been fixed and there was no longer an issue, but have now changed their minds. It turns out however through recent correspondance with the manufacturers that despite more testing they still can't find a total solution to the problems, which clearly means whatever solution we have implemented on their instruction has not, in fact, fixed it. So, in the interests of not having students and valuable instructors fall out of the sky they have decided to ground the katana fleet long-term and perhaps indefinately.
So what does that mean for me and my fellow Craptana students? We are apparently going to be converted to cessnas, yet more of which are being brought in to replace the katana short-fall. How long this will delay things for me is unclear, as those from cp43 that remain on katanas from the last time will be a higher priority than us and we will all require 2 or 3 "y-flights" in addition to our normal syllabus plan to learn the cessna type. In theory we are getting two cessnas from NZ in the next couple of days, while 3 more are being sourced from australia, but will obviously take a little longer to get here. In the mean time we have the cessnas that are already here of course, so hopefully we are not looking at too long a delay. Shame I hate cessnas!
So, the katana is no more... at least not as far as we are concerned. Perhaps some distant CP in the future will have the joy of flying what is, in all honesty, not a bad aircraft providing you are willing to overlook it's deep-burning desire to end your life....
