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Top maintenance shops in Central Europe

Pytlak wrote:

This is extremely complicated thing. There is no universal solution, you cannot say big=good, small=good, etc. All maintenance companies are going through various phases so there is no recipe for that. It is a continuous process and you as an owner and pilot are responsible for ensuring good maintenance of your ac. I do recommend to work together with the mechanic, which is something that can be done in small shops and with freelance mechanics. You need to have good knowledge and understanding of the systems of your aircraft. If you are unable to do it this way than it is perhaps better to buy a new airplane like Cirrus and make sure that the maintenance does not touch it too much :-). Than sell it when it is still quite new and replace by brand new again. This way you do not have to go through much of the invasive maintenance…

I don’t fly a Cirrus because I still want to remain as a respected member of the aviation community I am in :)
On the other hand, the examples I listed above are irrelevant to age of the aircraft. These are basic maintenence errors that could happen to any. Had I not been very savvy about my aircraft, I’d not even have caught these issues before the first flight. My intention of the post was to try out other shops where there are more strict inspection rules. I don’t mind a junior mechanic doing a sloppy work but a senior inspector should catch that before releasing the aircraft to service,

Switzerland

quite honestly I would share this information

I would too, because almost nobody in GA (piston) maintenance is making a lot of money, and more business will make their operation last longer and serve more customers better. It is a scaleable business. You scale it by careful recruitment and paying them decent money

The quality of work depends not on a “company” but on the individuals working there. The European system of approving organisations is basically a bogus strategy. Anyone involved in manufacturing and e.g. ISO9000 will know exactly what I mean. Examples. It all comes down to who is actually doing the work. And a business owner is in a position to recruit and keep good people.

There are good companies out there. I have not used a company for regular maintenance for years (like nearly everyone I was forced to I use one when I was G-reg for 3 years and then used one under N-reg, until c. 2010 they sprayed some no-name motorbike lube in the elevator trim and it froze up at FL140) but found General Aero at Thurrock (UK) a really good bunch. They also did a couple of prop overhauls for me.

Central Europe, I don’t know any good names. It’s a cultural thing in certain countries that their domestic businesses get a hugely enthusiastic support (it certainly doesn’t happen in the UK; the Brits happily rubbish anybody who did a bad job, even 100 years ago ) but when one hears stories about actual jobs which went wrong, it’s obvious that none of these are above some fairly “average average”. I know of jobs which were huge disasters for the customer but were fixed with an “amicable arrangement”. We have various past threads here on some quite unsafe work also… The difference is that if you have a relationship with a company, even one which does a lot of bad work, they will tend to look after you, with e.g. a free loan of replacement items. This then produces a lot of positive reports on social media, but if a complete stranger turns up there, he’s not going to get anything special. Europe is a place with interesting cultures and the small size of GA (and the way piston GA runs on a shoestring) makes it hard for good quality firms to establish and keep going.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Thanks for your honesty WhiskyPapa. Most owners think like you from what we see here.

LFOU, France

I used to give the name of a very good shop in northern France but don’t do anymore as each people I sent them couldn’t arrange any work as they are fully booked and don’t take more customer.

Romain

LFPT Pontoise, LFPB

They should expand

Their regular customers will disappear. People are constantly dropping out of GA. Main reasons are loss of medical (more accurately a lack of investment in flying → unwillingness to spend a few k recovering one’s medical after some trouble) and family changes / family pressure. This process is continuously removing pilots who are (a) “older”, and (b) those who are young and getting older. Mostly, just the ones in the middle are in there for a long time. A business thus cannot stand still. It has to move forward all the time.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

“They should expand”

Many successful GA companies would love to expand but as soon as they train someone good, they’re poached by airlines or corporate jet maintenance companies who can pay €80k/yr. Unless GA owners are willing to pay at least the same rates as they do to have their cars maintained, there will continue to be a diminishing availability of good workshops.

Avionics geek.
Somewhere remote in Devon, UK.

I don’t mind paying higher rates for qualified personnel. We should have better trained mechanics for better rates in GA! I find it unjust that they don’t even have the rates car mechanics have. If we’d pay more per hour for better mechanics, I am almost certain the total cost of maintenance would come down along with number of maintenance induced errors.

Switzerland

Expanding a business in France is very difficult. Especially building a shop and recruiting. Those jobs do not attract the youth, so the few who go for it want ro make money.
To me, small shops could look into local people who lost their job and take care of their car/house. Maybe they could be trained and would not leave once qualified. Options exist to get a Part66 licence outside of a technical college.

LFOU, France

€80k probably means full time night shift and outdoors, and after you have Airbus or Boeing engineer licenses. Nearly all short haul is done that way. It’s a really horrible job.

To get a 66 you need AFAIK 2 years’ work experience and some exams. Or a conversion from A&P but you still have to do all the exams.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I think being an light aircraft mechanic (worldwide) is being driven by the market into a part time side-line job, as expectation for higher living standards has grown and in broad synergy with the rise of uncertified aircraft as the norm for new production. Typically the mechanic works full time when young, but as experience and personal responsibilities grow moves on to a higher paying ‘real job’. Working on planes then becomes a way to stay involved and make extra money. European regulations requiring affiliation with ‘maintenance organizations’ are swimming upstream and along with their resistance to a real Experimental category are killing GA in their geographic region of influence.

Flight schools and so on have the resources to pay full time mechanics to service their own certified fleets at a reasonable wage, the rest of the market seems to have moved on – either by adaptation or slow, ongoing, expensive suicide. I don’t think commercial maintenance shops for light GA have a bright long term future.

Last Edited by Silvaire at 21 Oct 17:38
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