A manufacturer's maintenance manual that includes torque stripe inspection procedures may be adequate to discharge the manufacturer's duty of care and avoid a finding of 'defect' under Part VA of the TPA, even where other inspection methods (visual crack inspection, washer bonding verification) are inadequate, provided the torque stripe procedure is sufficient to detect the relevant failure mode. The adequacy of a maintenance manual is assessed by reference to whether compliance with its instructions would have prevented the accident, not by reference to whether each individual instruction was optimal. LAMEs are 'intermediaries' for the purposes of assessing instructional defects under s 75AC of the TPA.
The full text is available to signed-in members, including the 3 later cases that cite this judgment.