General visual inspection (GVI) on aircraft: what “look” actually means

General visual inspection (GVI) is a visual examination of an interior or exterior area to detect obvious damage, failure, or irregularity. It is done within touching distance, with adequate lighting, and without magnification unless the procedure says so. It is not a glance from the fuel truck, and it is not a detailed inspection you invented because the panel was already open. The task card owns the standard. Your eyes own whether you actually met it.

Most missed filiform on a C-check write-up was visible on a previous GVI by someone who did not change the light angle. Raking light is not optional. Neither is looking at the side of the fastener you did not photograph. This desk is hangar English for people who open panels. If you wanted a market report on inspection drones, keep scrolling.

GVI, in the words the card actually uses

Touching distance means you can put a hand on the zone. Adequate lighting means you brought a light, or the hangar actually lit the bay, and you moved it. No magnification unless specified means a GVI is not a DVI with a loupe you decided to add. If the program wanted a detailed visual inspection, it would have said DVI (or the equivalent language in that operator's program). Do the inspection that is written. Do not upgrade it in your head and then skip a corner because you 'already looked hard.'

GVI finds the obvious: missing hardware, leaks, dents, cracks you can own with eyes, filiform threads under paint, peeled film, foreign object, the bonding jumper that is no longer jumpering. It does not own a subsurface crack in a landing-gear fitting. That is why magnetic particle, eddy current, ultrasonic, and liquid penetrant exist — different physics, different stamps, same airplane.

GVI vs DVI vs NDT

The American Society for Nondestructive Testing is where a lot of the civilian NDT conversation lives. The controlling document for aerospace personnel qualification is still the current NAS-410 revision plus the employer's written practice — not a society membership card. GVI is usually not that stamp. It is still a qualified look under the inspection program. Treat it like one.

Light, distance, and the side you skipped

Raking light turns a stain into a ridge. Straight-on hangar light turns a ridge into a stain. Walk the zone twice if the first pass was with the sun behind you. Mirrors exist for a reason. So do inspection lights that are not your phone. The tools desk is blunt about this: a camera does not substitute for a light you can put on a lap joint.

• Touching distance. If you cannot put a hand on it, you are not doing GVI — you are sightseeing.
• Move the light. One angle is a postcard. Two angles are an inspection.
• Look at the back side of the fastener, the downhill edge of the lap, the place the last blend lives.
• Clean only as the card allows. Dirt hides defects. So does a solvent wipe that removes the indication you needed.
• Write the zone, the lighting, and what you actually saw. A C-check crew cannot guess.

What GVI finds when it is honest

Filiform under paint. Missing cotters. A bonding jumper hanging by one washer. Lav water that has been painting a dry bay for a month. A lightning-diverter strip that is no longer a strip. A composite edge that is peeled — which is a visual tell, not a core inspection. Composite inspection still needs the method the SRM named after you found the hit. GVI starts that card. It does not close a tap or a UT.

AC 43-4B will talk you through corrosion as a family of conditions. It will not replace the task card. Use it as the corrosion-control circular it is. Pull ADs and regulatory text from the FAA Dynamic Regulatory System when the inspection is there because an AD said so, not because a forum said so.

What GVI cannot own

Subsurface cracks. Core damage under a pretty skin. Thickness remaining after corrosion you have not stripped. A heat-damaged skin that still looks like skin. Fastener-hole cracks after a removal the SRM called. Those belong to NDT, to remaining-thickness checks, to a teardown. Signing a GVI as if it were ET is how holes get missed. Signing ET as if it were GVI is how you skip the look that would have found the worms.

The current NAS-410 revision plus the employer's written practice own who may perform the NDT follow-up. See the NAS-410 training plan desk. A line A&P can be qualified in a method. An A&P is not automatically qualified in a method. The A&P license is airframe and powerplant. The stamp on the UT card is NDT.

Write it so the next shift believes you

Zone, lighting, access, what you saw, what you did not see, and the limit you used. 'Looks good' is not a record. 'GVI per card, raking light, no obvious damage in zone X' is a record someone can audit. If you found filiform, map it. If you found a dent, measure it. If you found nothing, say the nothing with the same care. Heavy visits and lessors read these cards years later.

The maintenance hub is the rest of this language — letter checks, corrosion, NDT. GVI is the cheapest inspection in the program and the one that fails from boredom. Treat it like the method that feeds every other method.

Inspection standards live in the operator's program, the AMM/SRM, and any AD that called the look. This page is hangar English, not a substitute for the task card. Aviation Titans is independent editorial.