Inspection terminology varies by aircraft type, maintenance programme and regulator. Typical categories include pre-flight and daily or transit checks, scheduled phase or periodic inspections, calendar inspections, annual or 100-hour inspections where applicable, progressive inspection programmes, special inspections after a defined event, and detailed component inspections.
Special inspections may be triggered by a hard landing, lightning strike, bird strike, propeller strike, severe turbulence, overspeed, exceedance, suspected damage or extended storage. Larger maintenance inputs can combine multiple inspections with defect rectification, component changes, corrosion treatment, avionics work and functional testing.
