Delivery preparation, and what the acceptance inspection is actually looking at
An acceptance walk is the one moment in an aircraft’s life when it is examined in detail by somebody with every incentive to find something. Understanding what that person looks at, and in what order, is most of what delivery preparation actually is.
This applies to a new aircraft leaving a completion center, to an aircraft coming out of a major refurbishment, and to a used aircraft at closing. The posture is the same.
What the person is actually doing
Whoever walks the aircraft on behalf of the buyer, whether that is a technical representative, a chief pilot or an owner, is answering one question: does the reality match what was specified and what was paid for.
They are not grading it. They are looking for discrepancies, and every discrepancy they find is a squawk that either gets fixed before acceptance or gets negotiated. That is the whole dynamic, and it means the goal of preparation is not to make the aircraft impressive. It is to make sure the discrepancies that exist are real ones rather than manufactured ones.
The order they actually go in
People are remarkably consistent about this.
The approach, from thirty feet. Overall paint quality, color match panel to panel, stripe alignment across joints, gloss uniformity. Anything that is wrong at this distance sets the tone for everything after it.
The entry. Door, steps, handrail, threshold, the first two feet of carpet. This is the first thing anybody touches and it forms a tactile impression that is hard to shift.
The cabin, seated. They sit down. Every seat, usually. From a seated position they see the underside of tables, the inside of side ledges, the seat track covers, the bottom of the sidewall, and the parts of the cabin nobody cleans because nobody looks at them standing up.
The details, up close. Stitching, veneer joints, plated hardware, switch panels, cup holders, the inside of every stowage. Fingertips on surfaces.
Galley and lavatory. Opened, everything. Under the sink, behind the coffee maker, the waste flap, the mirror surround.
The exterior, close. Now on hands and knees near the gear, looking at the belly, the wheel wells, the flap tracks, the static wicks, the drain masts.
The transparencies, against the light. Last, usually, and this is where preparation failures show up most often.
Where preparation actually fails
Consistently, in the same few places.
- Residue in the details. Polish residue in a veneer joint, cleaner haze at the edge of a plated bezel, product in a stitch line. This is the single most common finding and it is entirely a function of the last five percent of the job.
- Protective film adhesive. New aircraft carry film through completion. Removing it leaves adhesive residue, particularly where it has been on through heat, and residue at a panel edge in raking light is obvious.
- Transparencies. Wipe marks, haze, and light scratching from someone cleaning acrylic with the wrong thing. The FAA’s own guidance in AC 43.13-1B tells maintainers not to use alcohol, acetone, lacquer thinner or window cleaning sprays on transparent plastics because they craze. That instruction gets ignored at the last minute more than anywhere else.
- Seated-eye-level surfaces. Undersides of tables, lower sidewalls, seat bases, the outboard side of the seat nobody walks past.
- The belly and the wells. Because they are unpleasant to do and nobody photographs them, and they are exactly where somebody kneels down.
- Construction dust in the return air path. Behind grilles and in the plenum after any interior work. It shows up as dust on a surface an hour after the packs run, which is the worst possible timing.
- Smell. A cabin that smells of solvent, adhesive or cleaning product on acceptance day. Fresh work has an odor and it needs ventilation time, not fragrance over the top of it. Why fragrance makes it worse is here.
The paint constraint nobody plans around
On a newly painted aircraft, the finish is not ready to be worked on, and this collides directly with the desire to have it looking perfect for the walk.
Duncan Aviation’s guidance is a 30 day period before washing and waxing a high-quality urethane finish. The coating manufacturers publish dry to fly figures measured in hours, which is a different property. So an aircraft can be delivered legally, and correctly, with a finish that must not be polished or waxed yet.
The right answer is to say so rather than to do it anyway. A buyer’s representative who is told the finish is at day 12 and will be protected at day 35 understands that immediately. One who finds wax haze on fresh paint has found a real discrepancy. The full timeline is here.
How we run it
Backwards from the walk, not forwards from availability.
- Establish the date, who is walking it, and what the specification actually says. A discrepancy against a spec nobody read is the avoidable kind.
- Belly, wells and the exterior details early, when there is still time to redo anything.
- Interior at the material level, with the seated eye line treated as a separate pass rather than as part of the same one.
- Film and adhesive removal deliberately, with the right solvent for the substrate underneath rather than the one that works fastest.
- Transparencies last, done properly, and then not touched again by anybody.
- Ventilation time built in rather than hoped for.
- A walk of our own, in the order above, from a seated position, the day before.
That last step is the one that earns its keep. Doing the buyer’s walk before the buyer does is not clever, it is just the obvious thing, and it is astonishing how rarely it happens.
The useful thing to arrange
If you have an aircraft coming out of paint, out of interior, or coming to closing, the preparation should be scheduled from the acceptance date and the paint constraint should be known by everybody in advance.
We do this with completion centers and OEMs and with MROs as a standing arrangement rather than as a scramble. The service is here, and every step of it is logged against the tail in our system, so what was done and when is a record rather than a recollection when somebody asks three months later.
Questions people actually ask
Short answers
What is an aircraft acceptance inspection?
The walk a buyer's representative makes to establish whether the aircraft matches what was specified and paid for. Anything they find is a squawk that either gets fixed before acceptance or gets negotiated, which is why the goal of preparation is to ensure the discrepancies that exist are real ones rather than manufactured ones.
What do inspectors look at first on a delivery walk?
The approach from about thirty feet, for overall paint quality, color match panel to panel and stripe alignment across joints. Then the entry and the first two feet of carpet, then the cabin from a seated position, then details up close, then galley and lavatory, then the belly and wells, and finally the transparencies against the light.
Where does delivery preparation usually fall short?
Product residue in details such as veneer joints and plated bezels, protective film adhesive left at panel edges, wipe marks and light scratching on transparencies, seated-eye-level surfaces such as the underside of tables and lower sidewalls, the belly and wells, construction dust in the return air path, and a cabin that still smells of solvent or cleaning product.
Can a newly painted aircraft be polished before delivery?
Usually not, and the right response is to say so. MRO guidance calls for a 30 day period before washing and waxing a high-quality urethane finish. A representative told the finish is at day 12 and will be protected at day 35 understands that immediately. One who finds wax haze on fresh paint has found a real discrepancy.