I just received this from the BC Floatplane Association. After reading it, I want to think that this is an April Fool's joke, but I am not counting on it.

Transport Canada is considering charges against a local FOB for signing out an aircraft with unapproved float plugs that was involved in a fatal flight. Please read the letter as it will inevitably affect us all.

http://www.bcfloatplaneassociation.com/pdf/Balls.pdf

If they had brass monkeys for pilots, they'd have lost them all by end of winter anyway.

The link doesn't show the article. So what kind of non-approved float plugs did he have? Sponge balls? I wasn't aware that plugs needed some kind of approval.

As far as I know, this will only affect Canadian operators, with EDO floats. In the US, all that is required is a signout in the logs that the new style plugs are installed. The new style lake and air plugs that are commonly used are approved for wips, caps, aerocets, etc. but not edo(in Canada).

The problem is that the original design plug was discontinued, and the replacement plug(rubber ball) was only specified on some of the float drawings. For some reason all the drawings weren't updated at the same time, so "officially" if the number isn't shown, it can't be used.

They are working on it to solve this, and it is not expected that there will be any problems.