What is an aviation consultant?

[AerBabe]

I keep coming across the title 'Aviation Consultant'. What do these companies do? Or is it really just that they know all there is to know about aviation and sell this knowledge to whoever wants it? Does anyone work as one? Does anyone have any idea what it's like as a career? What about relevant experience/qualifications?
Thanks in advance! AB

[Rwy in Sight]

A guy I know that use to describe his profession as consulatant of aviation companies was providing overall technical assistance to a National Aero Club. He has a CPL and he needed that title in his dealing with the National Taxation Service.

Another guy worked after his MBA in Cranfield in a business with such a title. I am not sure what he was doing exactly but he is one of the 9/11 job casualities.

Well my understanding is that you apply for the company and you stress your aviation qualification and so forth.

How is life with your parents?


Rwy in Sight

[Boss Raptor]

There are so many disciplines required in the airline industry that any one individual who knew them all would be unusual to say the least...

Too broad a brush...what discipline, what experience, what background, what qualifications...will all differ...and a good core grounding and networking in the industry is a must.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Thats what one of my business cards says I am.

Basically it means I have a set of aviation skills, and am prepared to take other people's money to use them for their benefit.

In my case it generally means either running various certification projects for small or medium sized aircraft companies, or writing articles, manuals, etc. for people who need such things.

Why do people pay somebody like me for this instead of doing it themselves? Usually I have skills (such as how to write the CAA certification reports for a foreign aeroplane somebody wants to sell) that they very rarely need, so it's not worth keeping current within their staff.

There's no standard skill-set for a consultant, I've met people doing everything from aircraft certification, test-flying, procedure writing etc. to a very knowledgeable chap who does failure analysis of broken aeroplane parts, via a friend who designs avionics installations for one-off experiemental aeroplanes.

A firm of consultants is just a group of people, probably with complementary skills, who have banded together to do the same thing. Sometimes this can be a couple of people with disparate skillsets, sometimes a large enterprise filling an industrywide need and which has become a substantial company in it's own right.


I don't do this full time (but it does pay for my private flying and the odd holiday), but many others do. Pretty much everybody I know who became a consultant did so because they were working in an area where it became apparent that something needed doing, somebody was prepared to pay for it, and they could do the work better than anybody else available. Given that, although professional qualifications are relevant - the bottom line is your reputation and track record.

G

N.B. I've not personally ever joined the British Association of Aviation Consultants (http://www.baac.org.uk/) , has anybody else, and was it worth it?

[OzExpat]

And, of course, an aviation consultant can never be described as someone who's paid to say the things that the client wants to hear... :rolleyes: After all, the trick with that concept would be to figure out what the client wants to hear. :}

[zalt]

AerBabe

Consultants thrive on the occasional management misconception that the outsiders always have more insight.

They pretend to know more than their client, charge a three figure sum per hour while inventing a whole new lexicon of jargon to answer the question and get under the feet of the insiderswho really understand the problem.

Seriously, they can be worth the cash if you get one who actually can "do the business" rather than just talk about it.

[Genghis the Engineer]

That's management consultants, a totally different breed !

G

[G-SCUD]

Ah…Management Consultants…The OED tells us:

1.Person with an ego too large for one company to sustain.
2.Company Doctor: examines hidden and embarrassing parts of the company, tuts and shakes head and then charges a fee which is just too little to send the company into receivership (telling the company something they already knew…).
3.What Middle Class people say they’re doing when they are out of work.

Cynical? Moi??

[compressor stall]

Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those left over, consult.

[AerBabe]

Thanks for the answers, it mostly seems to make sense. Although I'd disagree strongly with Stallie's comment (I can and I teach). :p
And don't worry, I'm not thinking about it as an immediate option... more something I could consider a bit further down the line. If I can't get a job flying Mustangs that is.

[seacue]

The chap who lived behond my parents' house (before he left his wife and married his secretary) was a consultant to small family-owned businesses.

He was a very pleasant fellow.

I assumed that he was generally hired to tell a family (in a nice way) that the idiot son was too stupid to take over the business.

Of course everyone in a family that hired him already knew that the son was an idiot, but they needed an outsider to tell them so the blame would lie outside the family.

Talk about meeting one of society's needs!

[Genghis the Engineer]

Tell you what Aerbabe, if we can find out who buys the assetts of this company (http://www.thundermustang.com) , we'll both go and consult for them. I'd be more than happy to take on the certification and testing of this baby, and I'm sure you can think of an appropriate activity?

Failing that there's
this alternative (http://www.loehle.com/MustangKit.htm); it's not quite in the same league but what the hell if somebody's paying me to try and certify an aeroplane I'll do my best !

G

[AerBabe]

Genghis - seems like a good deal! As long as they both make 'that' noise. ;)

[Frankfurt_Cowboy]

It's David Learmount isn't it?

[747FOCAL]

Most times they are the aviation "insultant"........ :E

I saw a cartoon once that had two guys standing over a body looking thoughtfully at it....... The one guy says to the other "You can tell by the viciousness of the stab wounds that the guy was a consultant"

:E :E :ok:

[Lu Zuckerman]

I have been an “Aviation Consultant” since 1968 and I have often asked myself the same question. I have had several answers to my queries ranging from “A consultant is anyone with a briefcase and is more than twenty five miles from home”. I have also heard that a consultant is an expert in his own field, which leads to another question, “What is an expert?” The answer to that is an expert is someone that knows how many sticks of dynamite © to stuff up a bulls butt in order to blow his horns off without getting the bulls’ eyes bloodshot.

I have worked in this capacity in most of the worlds major aviation firms to include companies that build ships and on a government manned space station as well as communication satellites. The type of work I do (Product integrity) is mainly performed early on in the contract but in almost every case I was brought in after the design had been frozen which severely limited my effectiveness. If I came in early in the design the engineers would reject my input as being too costly or because it was (NIH) not invented here.

I have seen many contracts and designs come to fruition riddled with problems that would manifest themselves after the design entered service. Very few firms really do what the consultant suggests.

I have been doing this work for over 35 years and I keep telling myself never again. However if I look at it realistically and I want to keep working I have to keep on keeping on. My next job is on the A-380.

:E :E

[Genghis the Engineer]

It's David Learmount isn't it?

Careful, accusing anybody of being David Learmount round here could be fighting talk.

G