Not really the case, I've been around manufacturing and repair for a long time, (I was heavily involved with G5 wing manufacturer) and although mistakes do happen, they were/are taken care of on a case-by-case basis with an engineering order for a specific problem, ie: an oversized hole. Never saw a case or situation where the entire assembly was made with defects and covered by a 'blanket' EO.
This hits the core of the issue for me. In a prior career I signed many nonconformance packages (military), but each was specific to the situation at hand. There were occasions where the mediation led to changes to the plans and/or shop instructions, but the paperwork requirement was higher for a wide-reaching change than for a specific part.
There is an accepted process in certified aviation (I know we're not there, but the lessons stand) - when you find, as Vans has, that the prior guidance may have been overly conservative and is resulting in either the scrap of actually OK parts, or causing a paperwork and engineering burden to adjudicate each case individually, you can update the plans to reflect the new standard.
I don't understand why Vans has been unwilling or unable to do this - we need some guidance on what exactly constitutes acceptable cracks in LCP. I have no idea if any given part I'm working on falls within the range tested, how many are acceptable, etc. The engineering assessment would have failed my undergraduate structures homework, and just isn't complete for what they're asking. The required documentation to cover hundreds of parts, in thousands of combinations, in multiple airframes would take much more than a few pages with no quantitative data. It wasn't even clear until the 2nd revision that the tested parts had visible cracks!
If we had solid guidance to go on, many would still choose to not use LCP (as is their prerogative), but at least we'd have some standard to build & inspect to.
Remember, 6 months ago the red parts were OK for use - we need a little more documentation before we can really trust that "this time is different".
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