It may surprise some that have read my earlier postings, but the chopped up 235 that Bill Harrelson showed us looks like it could be a fairly straightforward repair job.  It appears that damage is limited to structure only (no systems involvement) limited to right side of the tailcone, the right side of the horizontal tail and elevator, and relatively minor damage to the vertical fin and rudder.  The repair job is probably even within the capability of the average-to-above-average Lancair builder, although I doubt any of us would want to do it.

 

Now I'm not saying that this should be represented as "no damage history" and I'm not surprised that the insurance company considered it "beyond economical repair".  The salvage value should be considerable ($25K for undamaged engine, prop, and avionics?), the intrinsic value of 235's is not that high ($50K? help me out here, guys), the repair (while straightforward) is probably time-consuming and thus costly (300 hours @ $50/hr = $15000 plus $5000 for bodywork and paint?) and a knock-down on resulting aircraft value probably oughta be $10K or more. 

 

Bottom line -- it's cheaper for the insurance company to total it out but it does not surprise me that the airplane was repaired and flown again safely with original structural margins intact.  Granted, it could also have been badly patched and quite dangerous as a result -- we just don't know without a detailed inspection and maybe even a structural proof load test.

 

Still, to represent this as "no damage history" is fraud of the highest order.  Bill, thanks for sharing this with us.

Rob Wolf