Back again sorry it takes so long to reply to these posts, in BA you have loads of time to spend at the PC as everything else is done for you and all you do is turn up to work and fly then go home. This suits many of those at BA, it didnt suit me.
On that subject, there are many people in BA with vast amounts of knowledge, but that knowledge is not filtered through to the top. The reason for that is that you can only get the information through a middle manager type, this is then normally binned because they didnt come up with the idea. To get your idea through you need to become a manager and to do that you need to go through interviews and and need to sign your life away working weekends and all your days off.
In this new world I have entered you are already the middle management and everyone listens and if it sounds good then it gets done.
Here's a few things for discussion.
After Sales Support
Please let me know if all you other BBJ operator/owners have the same problem. When the BBJ comes out of Boeing the support just stops.
1. The AOG desk is no good, we use Trade-Air as they get the parts to us when we need them not when Boeing can get around to getting them to us.
2. When we want something changed on the aircraft that is different from the delivery status ie changing from track up to heading up they immediately start talking about paying extra ($15000+). Surely if you have paid this sort of money for an aircraft it should come as part of the warranty.
3.When Boeing suggest an approved outfitters they should carry out some sort of quality assurance, not approve companies that take 2 years to get it outfitted from green to flyable. This then reduces your effective warranty from 5 years to 3 years.
Owner Hassle
It seems amazing to me that the people that own these aircraft have to put up with so much day to day hassle from third party suppliers. Why is there not a support company that looks after their interest so that the owner only has to talk to one company that then deals with the suppliers. What do I mean by a support company?
If you had a company that dealt with the Sales companies, the maintenance companies, the crew training, insurance and the whole lot and reported to the owner every six months, the owner would then be left to enjoy his aircraft, and not get involved in the everyday wrangling of the support companies. I know there are 'management type companies' hwever they charge lots of cash to the owners. Why not make it free for the owners and charge the suppliers a small percentage. This percentage being made available to the owners to ensure their trust in the business.
You guys will know alot more about this than I what are your comments?
As for my progress, as you can see I am on a steep learning curve. We now have some great flightdeck procedures, these finally became a combination of what I learnt at BA and what I learnt from the other pilots. It was a great two way flow of information. There were a few sticky points but we all feal that we now have a great checklist and SOP's that have increased the safety and efficiency ofthe operation, now its time to look at the efficiency of the whole operation.
What else do you want to know?
Please remember, I respect the privacy of the owner and cannot comment on certain subjects.
Best Regards
Bobby