I never cease to be amazed at the sheer randomness of the “owner experience” and this has to be the most notable aspect of GA aircraft ownership.
Recently I came across a thread in another forum (paid for, but this was in a small publicly accessible section) where Socata aircraft got viciously slagged off by some never-owners and also by some ex-owners, for allegedly high parts cost and long parts lead times.
As I have owned a TB20GT from new for 12 years I know what my experience is, and it is very significantly different!
OTOH I have had more than my share of issues with bits of it – mostly early on – so I can see that somebody would quite easily get “unlucky” on multiple fronts and get shafted.
In my case, I am fairly sure that Socata built the new plane with a pile of avionics which were returned with intermittent problems, were bench-recertified as working (JAR-145 – so had to be good, QED!) and they threw it in my plane. Sure enough much of my panel was replaced under warranty by the rather pissed off dealer (Air Touring) who then had problems getting compensated for it by the factory… I would put €100k on the total list price value of the bits changed, even if nobody in the mfg world actually pays that, and anyway some other sucker would have ended up with my old stuff once it worked its way back into the “extended warranty exchange pool” in which all the old crap goes round and round (I once got a 1982-built instrument that way), so somebody out there had all “my” fun all over again. That’s how aviation works… But after that, I have had an amazingly trouble-free plane, and anyway almost nothing with the actual plane (airframe/engine) has ever gone wrong.
This kind of stuff makes me wonder what the biggest factors are in getting seriously shafted because it clearly does happen to some people much more than others.
Luck. Your trouble free operation could easily turn into a maintenance nightmare.
People tend to think that a trouble free operation is thanks to their ingenious methods and troubles are due to poor production or poor maintenance. The truth is that it’s very often just luck.
Tomorrow a TB20 decomposes in air and an AD is issued grounding the whole fleet for months until a modification costing you €50k is available. That is all possible and not unheard of. Or maybe Lycoming decide they want to sell more crankshafts?
Maybe it is just luck. But Peter has a very hands on and proactive approach to maintenance.
Many others have a ‘defer if possible’ attitude to maintenance. The ‘if possible’ part will come down to the owner and the engineer pushing against one another and see who wins. Inevitably a lot of the deferred things will come to a head around the same time (perhaps with a new owner), and leaves a sour taste.
Dublin Pilot………..got it in one !
Yes, detecting any issue very early AND acting quickly are important. This is a good reason to have some knowledgeable people looking at one’s craft from time to time, even if informally.
The most important factor, though, by far, must be the degree to which one can do one’s own work on the plane, instead of having to buy work from a duly accredited workshop. In fact, this is the one factor that makes private flying affordable to me, at all. Of course there’s a price to be paid for that, I can never dream of doing the kind of trips we sometimes read about here. VFR only to begin with – craft to approved by each individual country visited comes next. No problem, no jealousy, I am happy to be flying at all – could never have dreamed of it forty years ago.
Doing the work one’s self has multiple advantages:
It’s certainly true that costs are reduced by the degree to which the owner is personally involved in maintaining his aircraft. I bought my #2 plane about 3-1/2 years ago and have by now mostly worked through all types of deferred maintenance ‘issues’ as described by dublinpilot, but minus the conflict. In a year or so I will start a new ‘campaign’ that I hope will include a show quality paint job. For me all that is fun, and I do it with every used vehicle I buy – because for used vehicles (and some new ones) it is always needed. To think otherwise is deluding yourself in my experience, especially with planes. You will never find a plane that has no existing problems, regardless of what you pay to buy it, and whatever money you spend rectifying those problems and maintaining the plane will be mostly lost at resale.
Therefore the way I see it is that you need to be happy to get personally involved with your property, or you’d better be making a lot of money with the time you use doing something else. There’s nothing wrong with the latter either, if it’s the case, and if you do it right you can get optimize results for the hands-off approach: the best way seems to be getting one guy (not a maintenance company) to do what you would if you had time. It will still be a very expensive, money losing hands-off activity so get busy making money to pay for it 
Two guys I know are 50/50 partners in a very nice Bonanza – one guy has lots of cash and the other is a very skilled A&P IA who splits his time between that and doing CFII work with new owners of fancy planes. I think I know how the bucks-up guy got his money – he knows how to pick a partner!
A more tricky question and perhaps more relevant to most owners is how to control costs if you are not personally involved in doing the actual work.
Yes, a trickier question and one for which I intended to indirectly supply an answer: put the plane on N-register and find a good IA and a hangar. Or if any operational limitations aren’t a major factor, own a permit to fly aircraft or equivalent on another register. I don’t think its otherwise feasible to anticipate meaningful cost control for maintenance and repairs: EASA Part M is intended by design to remove control from the owner.
For me personally, if I couldn’t find a way to be closely involved with maintenance of planes I own, I wouldn’t be involved in aviation.
But then that bears a difficult question: are the existing maintenance companies outright evil or is it fear of repercussion by the authorities?
On COPA there was a recent account of an owner who had been waiting for months on some cosmetic parts for his SR22. When they finally arrived, they were sent by FedEx 2-day express for about USD 2700. He made it pretty clear that he never urged anyone to deliver fast or by that method.
To me that feels like disinterest and negligence by the supplier. Someone doesn’t care.
So again: is it that those companies don’t care and don’t value their customers? Are they evil, trying to harm their customers? Plain stupid? Or something else?
The larger the group of people who are involved with any activity, the less efficient it becomes. I think the only exception is when you remove all initiative from the individuals in the organization, as in factory production. Aircraft maintenance is never going to be like that, it requires unplanned initiative by its nature.
