True Cost of EASA to light aircraft owners

[Bob Upanddown]

As I travel around, I see many maintenance companies struggling to deal with EASA imposed paperwork. EASA has added a huge burden to the maintenance organisations who service our aircraft.
Some companies have responded by taking on extra admin staff (the extra staff do not appear to be from an aviation background so that is a worry) and others are struggling on and slowly drowning.

Most of the companies I visit seem to be covering up the true cost of EASA. All companies must now have two approvals (Part M and Part 145 or whatever) whereas only one was necessary before. New approvals required new processes, new manuals, etc. and new roles for staff (the Airworthiness reviewer being one), re-writing maintenance programs... They cannot be recovering all this extra cost from the small fee they charge for an Airworthiness review.

I received a letter a few years ago saying a well-known company were putting up their hourly rate, it was said this was to cover the cost of EASA. While I understand, is it fair to charge a visitor to your airfield an additional £15 an hour labour to fix a defect to cover the cost of providing your regular customers with a service?? Or charge your customers on the N register a higher rate to subsidise your owners on EU registers?

Are any of the maintenance companies being honest and charging a Part M management fee for looking after the log books and issuing the ARC and writing & amending your maintenance program? Or are they just hiking up the cost of maintenance (by fair means or not fair means)??

I feel I was ripped off this year with inflated maintenance charges for much the same as last year (no, nothing like mandatory replacement of a switch or mandatory seat-belt replacement). As far as I can see, like for like maintenance cost me 20% more this year and 50% more than 4 years ago.

My question is this: Is that extra 50% all due to EASA?

[jxk]

I like the tenure of your post and of course you are correct EASA has inevitably pushed the cost of maintenance skywards. However, we mustn't forget the cost oil and parts has also risen along with the more compulsory nature of replacing seat belts and hoses for instance.

[peterh337]

I am N-reg but from what I see, the costs of Part M can be addressed effectively if the firm gets well organised, with decent IT systems.

The shameful thing about GA is that not all firms are particularly honest, and many are honest but disorganised. So costs go up.

Incidentally I pay the Part M rate ;) Plus I pay the IA directly for the Annual signoff. The only way to avoid that is to have a hangar in which maintenance is permitted and then one can use a freelance A&P/IA to do the whole job, at about 1/2 the cost of using a company... The lack of such hangarage is a principal factor in maintaining the present situation.

[maxred]

Going out on a slight limb here, but the majority of companies that I have seen are run by engineers, and or pilots. Not necessarily business people.

It is a bit like the Health Service where doctors used to run it, until they brought in a guy who was a line supervisor at a baked bean factory to run the Trusts. Like it or lump it, these guys were brought in to run it efficiently. I have yet to witness a well run, well managed, well equipped in an IT sense aviation maintenance company. I am sure some exist, I just have not found them yet. My experience is the engineer-done good- who wanted his own company. Issue is that to get new business, needs to be cheap, needs to be cheap means less margin. Less margin means no investment. No business sense means prices remain cheap to keep custom. Eventually it all goes wrong with a dis- satisfied customer.


When will someone realise that in terms of maintenance we wish- good work, with transparent costings, with trust, with integrity, and to receive an expected invoice at the end with NO glitches. Simple really, isn't it??:\

[wigglyamp]

Trouble is, when the maintenance company does try to offer transparent costs and good quality work for a reasonable price, owners vote with their wallets to get maintenance done in a chicken shed for £30/HR! Our rates for GA maintenance are much lower than a local non-franchised garage, yet we have the fees for Part 145, Part M G/I and all the associated hassles that come with EASA legislation. Couple that with paying salaries to licensed engineers when we're based in the south-east and have to complete with airlines who are now poaching barely qualified staff at much higher salaries than we can afford based on the guy's experience and it makes you wonder why we even try to make a living at it. For us, aircraft maintenance has to be a commercial operation with sensible returns. Many owners fly for fun and expect a cheap hobby. Unfortunately the two don't tend to match up very well.

[A and C]

What wiggly amp said !!!!!!

[peterh337]

Yes; the key issue is that too big a % of the GA community is so tight you could not get a #1 pozi up their sphincters, with getting half a dozen quotes etc, and anybody in maintenance has to scrape a living off that... somehow.

That prevents firms offering a decent service.

It also prevents them operating a decent level of project management (meaning... most do what most builders do and take on several jobs concurrently knowing they can't do them all concurrently so they work on those whose owners scream the loudest).

One way out of that is to aim for the Cirrus crowd which mostly drops the plane off with a pre-signed blank cheque and the keys left on the seat :)

But there is an underlying issue with a high % of shysters. I dug out more shysters in 1 year of GA ownership than in 34 years of being in my own business in electronics. I get by by micro-managing everything, but many/most owners can't or don't want to do that. I don't think there is a solution. I know of firms who are very good for certain types of work but crap for others.