Full safety by Certified Maintenance

Especially recently, after the official publication of the accident report on the fire of an S10 (with undocumented maintenance history) in Hildesheim in November 2018, the cause of which was not a construc­tive, technical defect, rumours about the unsafe construction of the S12 aircraft have been piling up again.

Based on my more than 40 years of experience in the aviation industry, I can personally assure that all our aircraft have been and will be designed and produced in an airworthy manner and in accordance with the best state of the art – they are safe. I am not only responsible for this to the legislator, I also stand by my word. The S10/S12 aircraft is still the reference in its class in terms of the sum of its characteristics. Of course, this does not mean that it is designed like an utility aircraft, many solutions are very specific and even if the parts used look like standard parts of a Cessana 172, they are special, optimized constructions. This is the reason for the excellence of this glider, but also for its complexity.
I know you all know your airplane and what is good for it, you know the technology and have technicians you trust, but nevertheless a request from me, the S10 and S12 are very complex high-performance aircraft whose maintenance requires experienced specialists, that is us and our authorized specialist companies. Only here it is guaranteed that only original spare parts are used and properly installed, otherwise you not only endanger the loss of your certification, you endanger your safety.
And of course you would like to customize your beloved aircraft, install the latest avionics, I fully understand that, but please let us advise you on this: Things you mean well can cause unforeseeable errors in the overall system. In order to further help you Stemme is committed to increase the availability of spare parts. We are also constantly growing in the maintenance department to further help you with your annuals and special requests you might have.
Highly motivated and well-trained specialists design and build excellent aircraft at Stemme, passionate pilots like you fly them and through your feedback we at Stemme learn where we can improve further, that is why it is important to me that experiences are passionately exchanged on independent forums, but I have to react, which I have done with this, if a wrong picture spreads.
Let us all work together to further improve our beloved aircraft and do not be afraid to contact me directly.
I wish you all further beautiful, eventful flying hours in your aircraft.

Yours,
Peter Köppel

Accountable Manager