No aircraft is considered airworthy by the FAA until the weight of its paperwork exceeds its maximum certificated takeoff weight (or so goes the old joke). We in aviation are always complaining about the amount of paperwork that the FAA, in its infinite wisdom, makes us do. Any aircraft owner who has gone through the process of getting an IFR-approach-certified GPS installation approved knows that it sometimes it seems excessive and burdensome.But the maintenance records for our aircraft -- what most of us call aircraft and engine logbooks -- are different. They're a fundamentally important responsibility of aircraft ownership. They're vital to our ability to maintain our aircraft properly. They also play a crucial role when we want to sell our aircraft or buy another -- if you doubt this, just try selling an aircraft whose logbooks have been lost.The FAA requires us to keep maintenance records for our aircraft. In fact, there are more than a dozen separate FARs that define what records must be kept, for how long, and by whom.These regs define the minimum records that we as aircraft owners must keep. But they also leave quite a bit to the judgment of the folks doing the recordkeeping (the aircraft owner and his mechanic). As conscientious aircraft owners, I believe we can and should be doing more than the bare-bones minimum required by the FARs. In this article, I'll start by discussing what the FAA says our maintenance records must contain, and then offer some personal observations about what I think they should contain.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/ownership/the-savvy-aviator-23-maintenance-records