Being the other side of the fence I find that there are very few company’s that rip people off but this is equals the number of customers who deliberately contest the bill and make a nuisance of themselfs in an attempt to get the bill reduced.
I have seen the worst of these get away with huge discounts as the maintenance company just wants to see the back of them, I’m told that one individual tried this tactic with the guy who supplied the powered front gates to his house, ……. Unlike an aircraft maintenance company he was able to turn up and rip the gates along with the gate posts out of the ground !
The labour rates in GA are well below what you could expect from a high street car dealer but aviation has huge regulatory oversight from EASA, in short no one is getting rich maintaining aircraft !
The fixed price annual is not fixed, it depends on what you find and the only aircraft that get the annual for the fixed price are new or the ones that have a growing list of snags and eventually cost their owners a fortune all in one hit.
Aircraft maintenance is a very conservative business so parts Procurment and maintenance are slow to modernize.
However the thing that will kill GA is the low wages, young people no longer see the huge effort to get a maintenance Licence and the small return in the pay packet as a deal worth doing.
Sorry, folks, … no mine was not done in the UK but in Germany at MeierMotors, that’s a Warbird Shop at the French border. The airplane is under CAMO (RGV in Gloucester) and they send me a work order for each 50 h inspection and annual.
Sorry for the confusion
Being the other side of the fence I find that there are very few company’s that rip people off but this is equals the number of customers who deliberately contest the bill and make a nuisance of themselfs in an attempt to get the bill reduced.
I have heard some very interesting stories recently of the customers from hell. There certainly is a balance and MROs need to be able to pay their bills too. None of us like high maintenance expenses but if you own an aircraft, you have to either pay to maintain it or be in a position (both skills and regulatory) to do it yourself.
Dear God, a subject that has torn my heart to shreds!! A and C, I actually see and appreciate both sides.
The issue for the owner, is being charged for stuff that either has not been done, or that they cannot do, but just sign off anyway. I ended up with a deteriorating aeroplane, but being charged at every event 6k plus.
Three years ago, after a long search, I found my mech, but it took 18k, and an almost full rebuild, to rectify everything, that had supposedly been ‘maintained’. I now know my aeroplane from top to bottom, and essentially, so does he. We also have a full planned maintenance programme, on items that we run on condition.
My fixed fee, 1850.00, but my bills, with some additional stuff we do, are always 5k plus. The difference now is that I see where the money goes, and I can decide and am aware. Previously I did not have a clue, but trusted the organisation to do as they said they would.
From the company side, I see aeroplane owners running on a shoestring, haggling at every stage, and actually oblivious to what is actually happening with their aeroplane. This impacts the skill base available to the shops.
On a final note, you should see what I have seen, coming out after annual from UK shops…….on one we were surprised it had made it over the Irish Sea. Astonishing.
Once again, that “customers from hell” thing with people who contest every invoice seems to be yet another particular UK thing.
Seems you have lots of problems on both sides, the customers and the shops. I wonder why that is. Mentality?
The UK undoubtably has a strange view on things. So in part, yes a mentality thing. However, in reading US posts, the same kind of quality/trust issue seems to pervade. In every community, you will find good and bad. The trick is in finding and understanding the good and the bad….
In the UK, the nanny state mentality has a double edged sword result. Dumb the people down, and they view the authority, as making everything right. Regulation, government intervention etc etc. the CAA is a prime example. EASA another fine example of a mess.
In the States, the good old, be responsible, free reign, but watch out, screw up we will litigate…..
I know which I prefer. The other strange set up in the UK, is the if we drown it in paperwork, checklists, SOP, and statistics, all will be ok. It is a tick box thing..
UK state nanny mentality x 10 = EASA.
The main problem, as i see it, is the lack of quality control and training.
As the owner of a Mercedes dealership – if I told you how much money and time we are forced (by contract!) to invest in training, you wouldn’t believe it. One part of our workforce of 32 mechanics is always away for training and we constantly have to buy new special tools. When we broadened our product portfolio a year ago to sell Mercedes transporters and vans we got a new contract from Mercedes that included that we have to buy many new special tools – it even included stuff like new work benches and tables (there’s a special table necessary to lower an engine onto etc etc …). Cost us THOUSANDS of Euros to be able to start selling Mercedes vans. Plus a lot of training, new software, marketing, signs ….
And you knwo what? It still happens that repairs go wrong and customers complain.
You take your Cirrus to the next shop at your airfield that has been repairing 172s and Warriors for 30 years. and of coures they’re allowed to maintain your Cirrus. “It’s just another airplane” is what they tell you,and when you talk with them (as an owner who’s interested in the technolgy of the plane) you realize quickly that they practically know NOTHING about it except that it’s plastic, has a parchute and a Conti engine. The difference between a G1 and a G2 Cirrus? Forget it. Of course they can repair the Cleveland brakes and change a magneto – but they have no experience with the models, they don’t know any of the tricks and, of course, the owner of the shop would never invest $ 65 to become a member of COPA or contact the specialists for the type.
This way you pay for their “training on the job”, and if you, as the owner, have some deeper knowledge you can sometimes prevent them from ruining the plane. After twenty years with the new type they know enough about it, but by that time I’ll be sitting in a rocking chair and play guitar, hopefully in the sun.
I mean I had to tell the mechanics in a CIRRUS SHOP they shouldn’t kneel on the fron seats (because that ruins the honeycomb blocks in the seats). So what can you expect from a normal shop.
From the company side, I see aeroplane owners running on a shoestring, haggling at every stage, and actually oblivious to what is actually happening with their aeroplane. This impacts the skill base available to the shops.
This is one problem. The typical customer gets several quotes and goes for the cheapest. The company has to set itself up so as to make a living in that type of market, which means it has to strip down the services which a less tight customer rightly expects (e.g. project management i.e. getting the job finished on time 
)
I mean I had to tell the mechanics in a CIRRUS SHOP they shouldn’t kneel on the fron seats (because that ruins the honeycomb blocks in the seats). So what can you expect from a normal shop.
You got away lightly with the shop I think you refer to 
Once again, that “customers from hell” thing with people who contest every invoice seems to be yet another particular UK thing.
It probably is that, yes. I am not sure why. Brits aren’t specially renowned for being tight. Let’s face it, it was Germans who created LIDL…
It could be the prevalence of syndicates in the UK, and syndicates usually find it hard to reach agreement on anything but the cheapest job.
However, a “company from hell” will end up having a lot of “customers from hell”. I have experience of a number of firms since 2002 and there isn’t a single one I would go back to for general maintenance of my aircraft without any involvement or supervision from me i.e. dropping it off and collecting it when done. I am sure those firms have no shortage of customers from hell.
As I’ve said before, GA isn’t like a Merc or a BMW etc. If you drop your plane off for work (with a random Part M firm) like you drop your car off for work (with a randomly chosen official dealer), you are about 90% likely to get a crap job done on the plane, and probably 10% likely to get a crap job done on the car.
There are many reasons for this, the most obvious one being factory supervision (as Flyer59 describes). I work above a Kia dealership and even Kia (very cheap cars) are on top of that place down to the smallest detail… the chairs, tables, salesmens suits, the lot.
Another is the ease of achieving cost transparency; the price quoted is usually the price paid i.e. if the Merc outfit says it will cost €500 to fix the door lock, they aren’t usually going to come back for €5000. This cannot be done in GA where most planes are 30 year old cans of worms and you never really know what is going to crawl out when you open the can once a year.
Another is that most car owners are financially comfortable with their car (if they aren’t, they sell it, and it’s easy to sell a car) while most plane owners are to some degree struggling, with many really struggling. And syndicates are an extra dimension… Most would-be owners with €X in the bank will buy a plane for €0.8X to €X and this leaves them with almost no margin to play with. This doesn’t happen with cars (teenage posers excepted, but you are teen only once )
I am sure if cars were mostly 30 years old, the car maintenance scene would be pretty similar to the GA scene. Can you imagine making money on car repairs when most people bring you a Vauxhall Viva that’s been parked outdoors since it was made? Firstly there would be no manufacturer participation (because no new car sales activity would be attached to the service activity) so the whole business would sink to the lowest common denominator – a backstreet repair shop where you need to wear rubber boots to use the toilet.
You got away lightly with the shop I think you refer to
No, it was not RGV. I was very satisfied with RGV’s services.
and even Kia (very cheap cars) are on top of that place down to the smallest detail… the chairs, tables, salesmens suits, the lot.
That’s what made all the Asian manufacturers so big, especially Toyota, Nissan …
if the Merc outfit says it will cost €500 to fix the door lock ….
That’s another thing. With cars you get an estimates and the actual cost can be (in Germany) 10% highter than that – but not more.
Can you imagine making money on car repairs when most people bring you a Vauxhall Viva that’s been parked outdoors since it was made?
When i was a student i once had a very old 520 BMW. I used to repair (engines, weld …) all my cars myself but with electronics/electrics i was kinda helpless. When I visited the Bosch shop in Munich they outright refused to repair that car ;-)
