I didn’t say it was legally required, just that they all demanded it. As a result, I am my own CAMO and I have no regrets about that whatsoever. I don’t find it onerous.
Mine never demanded it, they juszt gave me the documents once they had registered the airplane for me. Other than that: If there’s no legal reasons, then I tell THEM what i want, not the other way around ;-) (Customer principle :-))
Doesn’t work that way, unfortunately.
If there is a certain way to do things in a widespread area (such as a country), you effectively have a cartel of CAMOs who insist on the same thing.
The annual avionics check in Germany is another such example. people in other countries can say a hundred times it should not be that expensive, that does not make it cheaper in Germany.
My airplane is G-reg and even based im Germany, and I have ALL documents and books at home. The CAMO only has their file on t
he aircraft, nothing else.
If the plane is in Germany and the CAMO is in the UK, so the CAMO never sees the plane, the CAMO may as well be on Jupiter. It is like getting your Class 2 medical from a doctor in Brazil without you going there. It shows what an artificial fund-raising mockery this whole CAMO thing is. How on earth can someone manage maintenance without physical involvement with the aircraft? You have to laugh… surely!
About the only thing you could do remotely is the equivalent of the computer-based maintenance programmes used with TPs and jets i.e. managing the mandatory actions for a rolling maintenance programme. But light GA is mostly free of mandatory actions (the 10 year SR22 chute thing is one exception – persumably because there is no practical way to do it on-condition, with the pyrotechnic parts) which is why it runs on the Annual plus 50hr checks, with only Europe (and probably other non US regimes) gold plating a lot of “on condition” actions into mandatory actions. I know of a number of people who have tried to establish a rolling maintenance programme and failed (both FAA and EASA seem to block it – with the FAA allowing some rare exceptions like a piston twin used for air ambulance and “suffering unduly” from the Annual downtime).
A good thread on “remote CAMOs” is here. Savvy manage to do it in the N-reg scene but they don’t have the ultimate control which an EASA CAMO has. They are more of a “consultancy”.
every one I spoke to wanted to hold the aircraft logbooks on a permanent basis. I don’t like surrendering control of such important documents.
That is normal. It should not be accepted and I never did it even when I was G-reg.
IMHO this depends on the political “balance of power” at the airfield. There are GA airfields where you more or less can’t get hangarage without tied maintenance, and then they have you over a barrel.
I wonder what your problem is with accepting that my CAMO does my paperwork only while the airplane is maintained to the standards the CAMO sets by a Cirrus Service Center. The Cirrus Service Center sends the completed and signed maintenance checklists to the CAMO and the CAMO deals with the paperwork and does the communication with the CAA.
Works perfectly for me and it is a great service for little money.
Other than that: It is an airplane, it can FLY to England if necessary for the CAMO :-)
Peter I think you do not really understand what a CAMO is… A CAMO is not required to have physical access to an aircraft, it is not its job to check whether all bolts are tight. It is a pure administrative task, using your doctor analogy, it is a “case manager”, not a surgeon. A CAMO would use a computer program to manage your aircraft which does the complete job for AD lookup, timed component management, printing of work lists, etc.
There are two ways to use a CAMO: the extreme way is as a fully responsible airworthiness manager which involves keeping the logbooks and receiving the hours by the operators on a weekly/monthly basis (“fully supervised environment”). The other way is that the operator retains the responsibility and has to inform the CAMO about airworthiness events. This is what GA pilots in Europe should do and it is just a new word for the very old thing of airplane shops issuing ARCs on behalf of the CAA which requires some due diligence from them.
In 99% of the cases for light GA, the CAMO is just another stamp of the same people who work on your aircraft. It is usually of no concern at all.
very well discribed achimha!!
one should just be aware when you make your contract with the CAMO that there are not too many “extra” fees apart for the anual fee for the CAMO (when I had CAMO this really was annoying – I now know better how to negociate any future CAMO contract)
make sure that they dont charge you for any work to be done on the aircraft by a 145 operation (i used to be charged 50 pounds for each “work order” ! this can add up if you have some even small things done to the aircraft outside the 50/100he´hrs !
I agree that I also would have no objection, if a CAMO for lets say 300-400 euro a year looks after my paperwork similar as Alexis discrebed
(CAMO does my paperwork only while the airplane is maintained to the standards the CAMO sets by a Cirrus Service Center. The Cirrus Service Center sends the completed and signed maintenance checklists to the CAMO and the CAMO deals with the paperwork and does the communication with the CAA.)
this may be alsp a good way to keep the paperwork in full up to date state and may increase value of the aircraft when you want to sell – it certainly helped me when i was looking for a aircraft to buy they ones i looked at that had CAMO the paperwork was more organized!!
I do not have a CAMO contract or anything, I just go there every year for the annual, work on the aircraft myself together with mechanics. When they first came to this shop, they asked me if I want ARCs from them (which translates to: “do you want us to be your CAMO?”) and then they added my aircraft to their software with all serial numbers, STCs, AD list, etc. That cost a few hours of inspector time back then. I get an invoice after each annual which looks like this (last month):
ARC: 280 €
LBA inspection costs: 15 € (whatever this is, my aircraft is G-reg)
100h check according to manufacturer instructions: 1250 €
Then the parts we took from their warehouse (smaller parts like screws, bolts, rivets, etc. included in flat fee of 12.50 €), extra work at the standard rate minus the agreed reduction based on the fact that I do a lot of the work myself. Nothing else but the UK CAA fee (70 GBP) which I pay directly to the CAA. This is for a complex aircraft (6-cylinder turbo retractable IFR). All prices plus 19% VAT.
If I see another Part 145 for some signed off work (which I would only do in case of unexpected events), they would surely not charge me any funny fees to incorporate it.
So where is all that CAMO overhead? Where is the cost? My whole invoice doesn’t even mention the word CAMO.
To clear things up, you can use a CAMO in 3 different ways :
Use of a CAMO is optional for non-commercial non-complex aircraft :
For an ELA1 there is two other options to issue an ARC after an annual :
achimha wrote:
I believe the badmouthing of CAMO among GA pilots is mostly undeserved. In most cases, the shop working on the plane (Part 145) is also a CAMO and the approval holders are the same people in both cases. The CAMO/Part 145 separation is something that does not concern the customer. Everything works the way it used to work — you go to the shop, they work on the plane and you return home with a release to service.We used to have a shop which was also the CAMO. After the owner retired and closed his shop, we now have separate CAMO and shop. I can tell you that this is not a good idea. You suddenly have two parties to talk to and many things you can’t just agree with the shop because the CAMO has to approve.
