Amsafe airworthness requirement.

[mhoffman]

Good evening,

I remember discussing this with my A&P last year but wanted to check with the others on the forum. Are the belts required to be overhauled if they are expired to have the plane considered airworthy. My mechanic did a visual inspection last year but told me they were not airworthy issues on acclaims where as in a cirrus they are required. Is he correct here or should these been overhauled.

 

Thanks 

[N201MKTurbo]

Is there an ICA for them?

[mhoffman]

So i messaged Brian Kendrick, he said that the only the seatbelt is TSO's but the infiltrator portion is not required. What i need to do is placard the panel to say AmSafe AIR Expired. 

[M20TN_Driver]

1 hour ago, mhoffman said:

So i messaged Brian Kendrick, he said that the only the seatbelt is TSO's but the infiltrator portion is not required. What i need to do is placard the panel to say AmSafe AIR Expired. 

If that is the case, can’t you just remove the amsafe equipment and not placard anything?

[LANCECASPER]

4 minutes ago, M20TN_Driver said:

If that is the case, can’t you just remove the amsafe equipment and not placard anything?

In the case of a crash I would take a "past the expiration date" airbag seat belt over a replacement non-airbag seat belt any day.

[Schllc]

There are three components to the system. The belt/airbag never expires, the inflator and sensor are the items that require intervals. 
you can remove the belts and replace with the older style, or you can placard them inop. 
one nice thing about the amsafe is the rigid buckle side of the assembly. It is fixed and easy to find, like a car.  
If you switch to the old style it’s cloth on  both sides so your fishing for the buckle. 
they are “required” to be disconnected if they are labeled inop.  
These intervals are bs in my opinion.  It’s just a revenue generator.  Has anyone ever heard of a car that required this?  And they have made probably billions of them. 

[M20TN_Driver]

I was curious. The told me the same thing when I bought my acclaim. I just but the bullet and replaced them. 

[N201MKTurbo]

Oh, you are talking about airbags. I thought you were talking about seat belts. AmSafe makes all the seat belts too.

[N201MKTurbo]

The company I used to work for made 16 10 million dollar air bag inflater production lines. Although I did very little work on this project, I learned a lot about airbags.

You might want to think twice about keeping expired airbags in your plane.

We made all those production lines to make replacements for the recalled Takata air bags.

The way they used to make airbags, they had “energetic” in them. It was the consistency of dry cat food. There was an exploding bridge wire initiator (blasting cap) at one end of the inflator to light off the energetic. At the other end of the inflator was a septum (sticker) covering the exhaust port. It then went through a small baffle (muffler) and to the air bag. The problem was the sticker covering the exit port. Humidity would degrade the adhesive on the sticker and it would fall off. Then the humidity would degrade the energetic so the chunks would turn into crumbs. 
 

When the airbags are set off, the crumbs would clog the baffle and the gas could not escape. The inflater became a pipe bomb. They killed a few people and severely injured quite a few more.

The replacement inflaters are what are known as hybrid inflaters. They don’t use energetic to produce the gas. They have a high pressure chamber with 7000 PSI of nitrogen with welded on stainless septum on one end of the pressure chamber. The initiator is still an exploding bridge wire with a small amount of high explosive on it. When it is set off the tiny amount of high explosive would send a small shock wave to burst the septum releasing the nitrogen. One advantage of the hybrid inflator is the gas is cold. The old inflators emitted very hot gas that would burn you.

So, If you are going to keep expired airbags in your plane, you might ask AmSafe if the inflaters are hybrid or if they use energetic.

They will probably tell you that is proprietary and they must be removed.

[DCarlton]

2 hours ago, N201MKTurbo said:

The company I used to work for made 16 10 million dollar air bag inflater production lines. Although I did very little work on this project, I learned a lot about airbags.

You might want to think twice about keeping expired airbags in your plane.

We made all those production lines to make replacements for the recalled Takata air bags.

The way they used to make airbags, they had “energetic” in them. It was the consistency of dry cat food. There was an exploding bridge wire initiator (blasting cap) at one end of the inflator to light off the energetic. At the other end of the inflator was a septum (sticker) covering the exhaust port. It then went through a small baffle (muffler) and to the air bag. The problem was the sticker covering the exit port. Humidity would degrade the adhesive on the sticker and it would fall off. Then the humidity would degrade the energetic so the chunks would turn into crumbs. 
 

When the airbags are set off, the crumbs would clog the baffle and the gas could not escape. The inflater became a pipe bomb. They killed a few people and severely injured quite a few more.

The replacement inflaters are what are known as hybrid inflaters. They don’t use energetic to produce the gas. They have a high pressure chamber with 7000 PSI of nitrogen with welded on stainless septum on one end of the pressure chamber. The initiator is still an exploding bridge wire with a small amount of high explosive on it. When it is set off the tiny amount of high explosive would send a small shock wave to burst the septum releasing the nitrogen. One advantage of the hybrid inflator is the gas is cold. The old inflators emitted very hot gas that would burn you.

So, If you are going to keep expired airbags in your plane, you might ask AmSafe if the inflaters are hybrid or if they use energetic.

They will probably tell you that is proprietary and they must be removed.

Guessing the energetic (explosive) material in those airbag inflators was a propellant and I remember propellents being hygroscopic.  And yes as explosive systems age, performance and safety can be impacted.  That’s the reason DOD conducts (or used to conduct) life cycle surveillance testing on older explosive systems.  I’d take a look at expiration dates and the basis for any service life recommendations too; I doubt it’s just a money grab.  

[N201MKTurbo]

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-recalls-defects/takata-airbag-recall-everything-you-need-to-know-a1060713669/
 

[Schllc]

There is no doubt that I am cynical, and I do remember the size of that recall.  
That being said, I am unaware of any automobile airbag that requires recertification every 3-5 years, in fact, I don’t recall hearing about any required time related for any airbag in any car.  
Also, not to be pedantic, but the airbags themselves in the Mooney have no life limit, the inflator and the crash sensor are what have intervals. You could easily remove those two components and leave the actual seatbelt without any danger of injury. 
I was faced with this delima recently.  The sad part is a brand new set of regular inertia reels for our little planes are over 2k new…

I recertified the entire amsafe airbag system. 
 

I do have two tan airbag seat belts from my interior refit if anyone needs them. This is the belt and buckle assembly only, no inflator or sensor. 

[mhoffman]

Ya to get all 4 replaced in my Mooney they want 10k seems crazy high to me.

[Schllc]

19 minutes ago, mhoffman said:

Ya to get all 4 replaced in my Mooney they want 10k seems crazy high to me.

I don’t even think that is “all”. That only sounds like pricing for one component per belt.