Piper PA-17 Vagabond

The fuselage is a welded steel-tube frame covered in fabric, with metal or wooden wing spars under fabric-covered wings; the fabric is replaced every few decades. The design is held under 1 type certificate (A-805, held by Piper Aircraft INC.). The FAA has issued 12 airworthiness directives (orders that owners must comply with) that name this model, most of them about landing gear. Operators and repair shops have filed 4 failure reports with the FAA since 1997, 3 of them in the last ten years: about 1.5 a year for every 100 aircraft on the register; the system most often named is landing gear. 107 approved modifications exist for it, the most by Electronics International.

Sources: the FAA's type certificate data sheets, airworthiness directives, supplemental type certificates, special conditions and special airworthiness information bulletins (Dynamic Regulatory System), and the FAA's service difficulty reports. A failure report is what an operator or repair station chose to file; the counts show reporting as much as reliability, and larger and commercial fleets report more. How the systems are grouped.