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Are both owners and maintenance companies unrealistic about maintenance costs?

Yesterday I was speaking to someone who has been in the business for about 30 years.

We discussed the “TB20 fixed price Annual at £2500+VAT” thing. Of course that is just the inspection part of the Annual, with no remedial work. The total price tag will depend on what needs to be done.

His view is that a SEP owner should expect his Annual to be about 10k, and anything less means the work is not getting done.

But I cannot believe that the average SEP owner thinks 10k is reasonable.

I know it is not unusual to spend 10k on an “old” plane, say a 30+ year old retractable, especially a syndicate owned one which suffers from the general lack of agreement around pro-active (“not necessary”) maintenance, so when stuff really has to be done, the bill is huge. But that is just mismanagement, or stupidity.

Yet, if you look at the business model of the typical maintenance company, throw in probable fixed costs, throw in the known number of regular clients, plus some as hoc business, it is clear they can’t make money on say 5k a year per client. They need to somehow charge something like 10k.

Hence I wonder if the whole business hangs together because there indeed are owners who “just pay whatever” (because they don’t care, or because they are over a barrel, with a plane that’s been grounded) and these subsidise those whose planes don’t need the work done (or don’t need the work done but still get a huge bill and then haggle / threaten to sue / etc to get the bill back down to what it should be).

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

There are so many factors: age, type, avionics, complexity – that working out an average with a satndard deviation would be difficult.

My experience is that the typical rectification bill on an annual is around 50-100% of the inspection, so in the case of a FG fixed pitch SEP around £3.5-£5k including VAT is reasonably in the ballpark. The tube and fabric type comes in lower. This excludes overhaul reserves, and glass avionics which may have recurrent

Operating an MEP the standard deviation can be quite an education, and trying to maintain a thirty year old plus MEP on a budget is not a safe proposition. I operated an MEP for ten years and it provided safe reliable service, but my attitude was that maintenance budget was elastic (excluding flummery type upgrades) – this meant items such as de icing boots, remote compass systems, airframe components, etc were maintained to a high standard, in addition to the usual annual inspection bills/rectifications.

Oxford (EGTK), United Kingdom

How much work represents a 5k inspection ? 1-1.5 man-day ? 5k is not a bad price for that !
I get that a shop probably doesn’t do 100 such inspections per year.

LFOU, France

Peter wrote:

Are both owners and maintenance companies unrealistic about maintenance costs?

Yes. It is indeed a survival trick for both

Antonio
LESB, Spain

I am in the middle of this as we speak. I asked for the annual inspection under FAR, manufacturers handbook 100 hr inspection, I received a quote for LAMS with an FAA sign off. They will not, at the moment, do it the way I want. The quote for the sign off under LAMS schedule is 3.5 + VAT, plus anything we find. As I reflect it is not a bad quote, however, they are not doing what I want. It will with certainty become a 5k plus annual, but as I have winged on for the last decade, this is nothing new to me, in fact my annuals have averaged 10k. In business, the supplier in general gets what the market is willing to pay. Few in business can dictate the sales price and survive. As GA declines (another topic) this will become a major issue for not only the GA infrastructure, but the facilities who offer maintenance.

To answer the question above I feel the owners are the ones who will have to migrate further up the scale, otherwise they may have the plane, but no one to maintain it.

Last Edited by BeechBaby at 06 Jun 07:58
Fly safe. I want this thing to land l...
EGPF Glasgow

Peter wrote:

His view is that a SEP owner should expect his Annual to be about 10k, and anything less means the work is not getting done

Depends on which SEP. For something like a Bonanza, that’s to be expected. But for an Auster – 10k would be nearer the cost of an annual that included a major fabric job (e.g. recovering the wings, and replacing the windows) than a normal annual. Both are SEPs, but the kind and amount of work that has to be done at annual (and who can do it) is vastly different.

Andreas IOM

10k sounds about right for an aircraft that has been looked after but anything that has been neglected for a few years is likely to need twice that number.

At 10k,
Plus parking or Hangarage
Plus insurance
Plus a 6 month check
Plus a small 1k misc fund
Burning 40l per hr (I actually burn loads more)
That works out at £475/hr for 40 hrs.
I really hope you’re wrong. Or this will be my last year of SEP and I’ll prob not downgrade to Permit or microlight. I’ll just give up and add to the demise of GA.
Peter mentioned a fly-out to Montenegro. Roughly speaking 7hrs each way plus fees and accommodation circa 7k for a long weekend away?
The old phrase of ’don’t ever add it up’ applies, but sometimes you have to look at it, as for some of us it can really sting.
I’m expecting a 10k annual this year but I definitely can’t sustain it. I do tell them I don’t want to cut corners, but I don’t intend to return her to factory new either.

United Kingdom

This is all about context. I owned a 10% share of a PA28 in Canada. The aircraft lived in the hanger next to our engineer; he had retired from the airline maintenance business and kept a ‘flock’ of airplanes under his care, ours included. This was a long term relationship, i.e. greater than 10 years, and included planning for major maintenance and keeping an eye on when things needed to be done (e.g. sourcing parts at the best price well in advance).

The annuals were very affordable, because the aircraft was in good condition, maintenance was ongoing throughout the year and there were not normally any surprises. The annual inspection cost was say 2 to 4 days labour (16 to 32 hours) at less than $100 Cad/hr (I can’t recall the rate exactly) which averages to about $2400 CAD (£1400GBP) plus sundries. Our annual operating budget was about $9600, of which $1200 was insurance $3600 hangerage. This left $4800 a year for maintenance. Over the years a fund would build up and be deployed as necessary, but there never seemed to be any deficits. The engine overhaul fund was separate and based on a reserve from the hourly flying. The ‘all in’ cost to operate this plane was something like $88/hr wet (about £50/hr), which was a very good deal. On this scheme we eventually did a full overhaul and repaint without a cash call.

What is different is if you do nothing all year and then treat the annual inspection as ‘annual maintenance’, then you are going to get a big bill at once!

I also owned a 25% share of a fabric covered float plane serviced by a ‘regular shop’. Despite it’s simplicity, this aircraft basically needed every component to be restored and a fabric job. You can either do the labour yourself (under supervision) and perhaps have a low priced annual or drop off the keys pay through the nose. If you were able to do the labour yourself it might have been inexpensive to operate (small engine sipping fuel), but we were seeing an all in rate approaching $200 an hour… I don’t recall an annual less than $5 to $10k and we employed a mix of doing it ourselves and paying for some tasks.

In the end I think you have to consider how involved you want to be and the combination of the total annual maintenance cost rather than just the ‘annual inspection’ cost.

Sans aircraft at the moment :-(, United Kingdom

GA_Pete wrote:

That works out at £475/hr for 40 hrs.

The secret is to fly more and the hourly cost comes down. :)

EGTK Oxford
45 Posts
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