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Lack of Maintenance Choice

Local to me two maintenance companies have closed. The licensed engineer at one place simply retired and there was no one to take over. I don’t know the circumstances of why the organisation closed.

The knock on effect of this would appear to be huge in fact I’ve just found out of 3 aircraft that Know of have a 216 mile round trip for maintenance!

There is actually an independent EASA Part 66 Licensed engineer locally. However he isn’t allowed to work at most of the local airports for reasons that I’m not aware of. I do know he has looked into setting up his own company but feels the hoops to gain the required approvals are such a hassle that its not worth bothering with.

Is this a problem in other parts of the UK or Europe even?

After our local engineer at Inverness retired, we had to fly to Perth for our annual, until we became LAA Permit. Dundee couldn’t do wood and fabric, and our last Annual in 2007 was at Bagbie, as we became unhappy with Perth.
Permit has been a HUGE saving in cost.
There is now a maintenance facility for certified aircraft at Inverness.

Maoraigh
EGPE, United Kingdom

There are loads of issues, and they depend on which side you speak to.

GA has a big problem in that, in the UK this being well known, but actually this is in most countries that aren’t overflowing with money, it is as tight as, to use the proverb, the 6 o’clock end of a duck. Look at the “boycott Airport X because they charge more than £10” all over the UK aviation chat site(s). This attitude translates directly into maintenance attitudes. People are not generally willing to pay for decent work on their plane, despite most driving up in a nice car. So the industry has to make a living by scraping out the bottom of the barrel. It is like “we get the politicians we deserve”. I’ve been peripherally involved in some cases where somebody was looking at getting into this business and it is obviously very tough no matter which way you shake the numbers. A successful maint company might end up with say 100 regulars, of which 80 want the absolute minimum done (especially if they are schools) and the other 20 might be willing to pay but will suffer from the same poor service as the other 80 get, so you get something like 95 slagging the company off everywhere. And you get various specific issues e.g. somebody buys a “cheap” plane, which has been neglected for 30 years, takes it in for the “fixed price £2k” Annual, and gets a bill for £10k, which drives him somewhere between suicide and litigation (and he slags the company off everywhere; not wholly without reason because had they been properly organised they would have given him an estimate first, having first agreed a basis for an initial inspection and then onward billing as more worms are found, if any). Now put some numbers on this… 100 regulars means you might extract (the word chosen deliberately) 500k a year out of these regulars, plus say another 100k from irregulars. You will need about 5 employees for this, plus the business owner who having paid out hundreds of k up front for the lease etc etc, and wasting his life on paperwork all day, plus CAA inspections etc, is looking for a bit more than the national minimum wage. Then hangar rent and business rates of 50k+. Subtract this from the 600k and what do you get? You can make a living from it but you won’t ever get rich. And 100 regulars is a bigger business than most of the little firms you see everywhere. Now, you might say, there are 300 planes in the area… but the other 200 fly elsewhere for maintenance… but they have to use the local one for AOG work, on which they get poor service, ahem, predictably! There are companies which do good work but they have spent years building it up, going for decent customers who appreciate it; some of these good firms, like the one at Thurrock, have a prop overhaul shop which brings in business from a wide area because props are usually shipped in, not flown in.

Freelance engineers are the next thing. On the N-reg scene, most FAA A&Ps and A&P/IAs work freelance – even if some have semi full time jobs – and this is de facto accepted by all sides (and a good IA is in much demand for Annual signoffs, which he won’t do without inspecting the job himself, unless he is a knob). However, on the EASA-reg scene, nearly all EASA66 guys are full time employed by Part M companies and cannot do freelance work except discreetly, which is ok until something blows up. And both kinds have to be careful who the client is; the nature of freelance work is that you are often working on a plane which has been potentially bodged worked on by somebody else, and the politics can get tricky. (With my plane, nobody touches it except my engineer and me, and cost is no object, so we have a great “team” with total mutual trust, but this is not common, and is very hard to arrange under EASA, especially over 1200kg.) This is where N-reg has a massive advantage – for the few owners who are willing to get involved. But a school can’t be N-reg. And N-reg is pretty hard today to get into today, with a long list of hassles like having to go to the USA for not just the checkrides (practically speaking) but also the written exams.

And freelance work is crippled because, for anything more than a regular service, you need a hangar. Even regular services need a hangar unless the schedule is flexible, because you can’t do it in the rain and wind. One could use a big tent but that makes you very visible. On EASA-reg you have the tight 50hr or whatever service interval, which complicates service schedules, unless upon reaching 50hrs you “forget to” log flights. And guess who controls hangarage? Hangar owners And these are, mostly, maintenance companies (who pay a lot of rent to the airport and therefore their complaint of “we saw somebody doing freelance work” carries weight) and airports (who get a lot of rent from maintenance companies). This is just one part of the dense political landscape of the GA scene – driven by the hardness of making money in it. If making money was easy, everybody would be nice, relaxed and generous. So the world goes around… spiralling slowly down this

ELA2 / Part M Light / whatever will help, but only to a limited extent, due to the cartel on hangarage and the use of hangars for work.

Also quite a few freelance engineers are useless so this is not a complete answer for an owner who is not involved. There are none I know of who I could recommend and who might take new clients. Also I have seen freelancers, especially EASA66 ones, walk off a job halfway through, because “something” was discovered which was “big” and which would have blown their moonlighting and endangered their day job.

If I was running a busy school I would set up my own Part M. That is what the big US schools do. The best organised ones do the maintenance (and refuelling) at night. That way you are not paying the profit of another company, your guys are working for you, etc. It is like if I was running an airport I would run the cafe too, not allow somebody to run a franchise there! Well, unless you can get a respected name in there, like Pret, Costa, etc. If your school is too small, get together with a few other schools and do it. That will also help with filling the various posts which Part M requires. This is no rocket science. As an ATO you already know about paper pushing. I know a firm with a few planes (not a school) which has just done it.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter, it is definitely not the same across the EASAland. For example, the Czech scene is totally different – there are plenty of freelance engineers who do the work at client’s premises; those who have a principal job are sometimes independent contractors rather than employees. Furthermore, it is quite common to choose such a visiting engineer for a specific task to be performed – for example, I know two guys who are magicians with sheet metal repair, one who does airframe rigging/alignment checks (I actually assisted him today), etc. On the other hand, my favourite flight school has its own Part 145 organisation and also has a Part 147 approval, so they do type training for engineers as well.

LKBU (near Prague), Czech Republic

Bathman wrote:

Is this a problem in other parts of the UK or Europe even?
In Sweden there is a shortage of mechanics licensed for piston engine aircraft, getting worse as people retire. The problem is worst in the sparsely populated northern parts but very noticeable in southern Sweden also. My club is fortunate to only have 25 minutes of flight time to the nearest maintenance facility.

I don’t see why not more maintenance people specialise in SEPs as there is a high demand. Having to wait several weeks in summer to get a slot for a normal 50/100 hour inspection is commonplace unless you have booked long in advance — which is of course difficult as the utilisation of individual aircraft is hard to predict.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

If I was running a busy school I would set up my own Part M. That is what the big US schools do

The company I am renting from is an AOC charter company for bizjets, air ambulance flights and cargo flights. They are a Part 145 maintenance company and run their own flight school from PPL and up to and including ATPL training.
It’s all under one roof. Which is pretty reassuring as a renter because their maintenance team checks the 3 C172s that are available for rent every morning. The availability of the aircraft is also extremely good. It’s not the cheapest outfit but so far I have a good experience with them.

They also service the privately owned TB20 I have flown before, among other based aircraft.

Last Edited by MedEwok at 11 Nov 09:24
Low-hours pilot
EDVM Hildesheim, Germany

My club is fortunate to only have 25 minutes of flight time to the nearest maintenance facility.

What do you do for the AOG situation? 25 mins’ flying time is 1-2hrs’ driving, which will be very expensive – of the order of €500 extra for someone to come down. I base this on the usual scenario of getting the FAA 2-yearly altimeter check done, for which there are very few options and you either fly somewhere, or they drive to you.

However even 25 mins of flying, 50 mins total, is a large extra on the maintenance cost.

Where I am based, there are two companies but the majority of planes have historically been serviced elsewhere, and I knew various PPLs who did the ferrying. They got some large discount on the rental, because they were going to some place they didn’t want to be in.

I don’t see why not more maintenance people specialise in SEPs as there is a high demand

I think if you throw some numbers in the air, like I did above, they don’t add up too well. If the business owner could make say 300k a year, a lot more would do it. The owner of a successful car dealership certainly can (some local ones here have a yard full of Ferraris back home, and that is just selling cheap cars) and I imagine a Cirrus dealer also does pretty well, with new plane sales, used plane sales, and they get most of the servicing work automatically.

I know a guy, EASA66 + A&P/IA, who made a max of 30k in GA piston maintenance but now gets 60k working on Airbuses. Admittedly his present work is all night shift and this is a dreadful life-destroying job, always outdoors, all wx, etc. But 60k is 60k.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

The only place to make money in GA maintenance is when repairing badly damaged aircraft for insurance companies, day to day maintenance on the newer aircraft that are working for a living can make some money but working on SEP checks just about breaks even but keeps the workforce busy until a real job comes along.

The rewards for staff was in GA maintenance is dire, I certainly would not have bothered to get a maintenance licence had it not been first tagged onto the back of my jet airliner qualification and second I had not wanted to own a light aircraft myself.

The attitude of customers is also a problem, just because flying is their hobby they expect it to be the maintenance guys hobby as well, some expect jobs to be done almost for free.

+1 !

FAA A&P/IA
LFPN

Bathman wrote:

The knock on effect of this would appear to be huge in fact I’ve just found out of 3 aircraft that Know of have a 216 mile round trip for maintenance!

Thought I already posted here, but apparently I didn’t. Hmmm.

Anyway. We have to fly 500+ NM round trip to do maintenance (more than 50h). There is one place in Sweden just across the border, but he is one single guy, and can only do so much. The result is microlight and experimentals. For club aircraft it is somewhat doable with a certified aircraft, because there is always someone who would like to fly the trip, but with a private aircraft, this surely is a real PITA.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway
32 Posts
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