Narrative:

While getting dispatched for a routine instruction flight; dispatch informed me there may be an issue with the annual for the aircraft not being found in the maintenance logs during a previous checkride oral that day. I was told to go look into it before the flight. I went through the entire maintenance logs for the aircraft; found no annual inspection done; and went out to the airplane to check the date on its airworthiness certificate (since the airplane is very new). I went out to the aircraft; checked the airworthiness date; and found it to be [date1]; meaning it would have needed its first annual inspection done by [date2] to be legal to fly. I told the student we weren't going to fly the airplane; and we went back inside to dispatch. They told us there to go report to maintenance to have them clear it up; so the student and I headed up there with the logs. There we met with the head of maintenance; and the chief flight instructor for the school just happened to be there as well. I handed the logs to the head of maintenance; and he proceeded to flip through them a few times before he closed them and told us it was good and to go fly. I asked him to show me in the logs where it showed the airplane was legal to fly; and he told me to just go fly. When I asked again if the airplane was legal to fly; he told me and my student to shake our heads yes and go. At that point the student and I left; and I told the student there was no way we were flying that aircraft. We canceled the lesson and the student went home. Another instructor that was present when I initially reviewed the logs then decided to go up to maintenance to check the logs of the other airplanes that were delivered the same time as the one in question. He was intercepted by the head of maintenance and told he couldn't look at the logs; and would be shown them later. Both of us instructors plus another one reviewed our logbooks afterwards and found out all three of us have flown the airplane since it was [suspected to be] out of annual; as have probably most of the instructors employed by the company. About an hour after this; the three of us were called into the chief flight instructor's office. There he yelled at all three of us; telling us we were starting rumors about airplanes' airworthiness; and tarnishing the character of our head of maintenance; who was about to receive a maintenance excellence award; and that the annual was in fact done [date3] and that there was just an error logging it. He told us to be quiet about this and not file any reports. He also mentioned that this issue was present with another aircraft in the fleet; but not specifying which one it was. The chief seemed very defensive and upset at us. After we were released someone in dispatch mentioned the annual was erroneously put into our scheduling software as having been done in [month]; which seems to be a logical reason for the mistake to happen in the first place. It is my belief that the annual for these aircraft were never done. After the incident us three instructors canceled our flights for the rest of the day. We noticed that the aircraft in question was flying again within an hour of us leaving work; and continued to go on flights the rest of the night and the next day.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Two flight instructors reported that an aircraft might be unairworthy due to a required annual inspection not done. When the instructors asked maintenance to show the aircraft logbooks; the request was refused and the Chief Flight Instructor reprimanded the instructors.

Narrative: While getting dispatched for a routine instruction flight; Dispatch informed me there may be an issue with the annual for the aircraft not being found in the maintenance logs during a previous checkride oral that day. I was told to go look into it before the flight. I went through the entire maintenance logs for the aircraft; found no annual inspection done; and went out to the airplane to check the date on its airworthiness certificate (since the airplane is very new). I went out to the aircraft; checked the airworthiness date; and found it to be [date1]; meaning it would have needed its first annual inspection done by [date2] to be legal to fly. I told the student we weren't going to fly the airplane; and we went back inside to Dispatch. They told us there to go report to Maintenance to have them clear it up; so the student and I headed up there with the logs. There we met with the head of Maintenance; and the Chief Flight Instructor for the school just happened to be there as well. I handed the logs to the head of Maintenance; and he proceeded to flip through them a few times before he closed them and told us it was good and to go fly. I asked him to show me in the logs where it showed the airplane was legal to fly; and he told me to just go fly. When I asked again if the airplane was legal to fly; he told me and my student to shake our heads yes and go. At that point the student and I left; and I told the student there was no way we were flying that aircraft. We canceled the lesson and the student went home. Another instructor that was present when I initially reviewed the logs then decided to go up to Maintenance to check the logs of the other airplanes that were delivered the same time as the one in question. He was intercepted by the head of Maintenance and told he couldn't look at the logs; and would be shown them later. Both of us instructors plus another one reviewed our logbooks afterwards and found out all three of us have flown the airplane since it was [suspected to be] out of annual; as have probably most of the instructors employed by the company. About an hour after this; the three of us were called into the Chief Flight Instructor's office. There he yelled at all three of us; telling us we were starting rumors about airplanes' airworthiness; and tarnishing the character of our head of Maintenance; who was about to receive a maintenance excellence award; and that the annual was in fact done [date3] and that there was just an error logging it. He told us to be quiet about this and not file any reports. He also mentioned that this issue was present with another aircraft in the fleet; but not specifying which one it was. The chief seemed very defensive and upset at us. After we were released someone in Dispatch mentioned the annual was erroneously put into our scheduling software as having been done in [month]; which seems to be a logical reason for the mistake to happen in the first place. It is my belief that the annual for these aircraft were never done. After the incident us three instructors canceled our flights for the rest of the day. We noticed that the aircraft in question was flying again within an hour of us leaving work; and continued to go on flights the rest of the night and the next day.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.