Aah now I understand DFC!
So it is now clear some Eastern European turns up in and the maintenance gets done, it must be very interesting to see how he gets the hangar and it's equipment in the back of the van.
The fact is back of the van maintenance is not sustanable if you are looking for quality, a few years back I had cause to look over an aircraft that had had a 150 hour check done in a field from the back of a van, the bloke took half a day to do the check and there was no evidence of some safety critical landing gear work having been done (because the guy did not have the jacks in his van). If that work is not done the gear will fail to free fall in the event of a Hydraulic failure.
What price is "back of a van" maintenance then?
50 hour check Yes as DFC says a PPL can do this but what he can't do is any inspections that are the subject of an Airworthiness Directive, most AD's are 100 hour items so a PPL will have to get a LAME in to do these items on the second 50 hour check in the cycle.
CAA costs & the small business most of the small maintenance outfits are probably looking after about 40 aircraft so the new CAA charges will come to £109 pa per aircraft or about £1.50p extra per flying hour for the average private owner in extra CAA fees. DFC please note this is fact not leading you down the garden path you just have to do the sums.
What I am tyring to make clear to DFC is EASA Part M only brings lots more paperwork and CAA charges, you don't get is any extra "hands on" maintainence and in the area of duplicate inspections of flying controls and other critical systems the EASA system is a real errosion of safety standards.
DFC we all know that paperwork is required and I have no problem with this but what I don't like is extra paperwork that has no benifit to the industry or the customers.
Now I am going to take a stab in the dark and guess that DFC professionaly fly's long haul for Big Airways and spends too much time in the cruise thinking of ways to save a penny or two.............. but on this I could quite well be wrong.