Sunfish and yr right:
Would either of you like to address the (very recent) experiences I detailed on page 1 of this thread?
Would either of you defend the LAMEs who performed those tasks in such a manner?
Would either of you address Jack Ranga's "customer charter":
I get from you a charter of operations in writing that specifies rectifications will occur if the job is not done correctly. I would also like to see in that charter that if you haven't worked on the aircraft type that I'm having serviced a guarantee that I'm not paying you to learn on it. If an apprentice is doing all of the work on my aircraft and you're signing it off I'd like some sort of concession.
Blindly stating that one side is right and the other is wrong, or that nothing needs to change in the MRO side of the industry, is ... well, blind.
I think that GA is its own worst enemy a lot of the time, we do nothing to fight the common enemy and little to attract the general public to what we do. "Customer Service" and "value for money" is a concept LAMEs and MRO owners don't seem to understand but by which operators live and die.
One MRO at Bankstown consistently under-quotes (in both time and money) and when it runs over budget and over time he just shrugs. "That's what it took". Yeah but you quoted... *shrug*
Another MRO in country NSW handed me a 100-hourly inspection invoice for a simple piston single with 98 hours of labour. "Oh well our guys are learning the aeroplane"
Your staff (pilots, engineers, sexertaries, everyone) are the tools by which you deliver a product to your customers. I would bet that no MRO owner would put up with the levels of service or the attitude I have seen from MROs if they were dealt with the same way in a cafe, a restaurant, or David Jones.
I have been consistently pleased with service from Eagle at Cessnock and Arena at Port Macquarie. Airag at BK go OK too. Ian Aviation at Archerfield are excellent.
All our maintenance now goes to Hunter Aerospace at Maitland and I will recommend them to anyone.
... the others.. well...
The industry is changing gears gentlemen, GA will continue but it will get harder between now and 2016. Those who cannot apply modern concepts of customer service and regulatory (and other) compliance to their business will wither and die.
Remember that 120 years ago the Horse was the mainstay of transport in Australia. There were horse breakers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carriage builders, farmers providing feed, and breeders producing horses for all sorts of different jobs. As late as the early 1950s my Dad's first job was delivering bread with the Baker's horse in Roseville in Sydney. He used to deliver to your house and Rainbow's too,
Dick Smith.
Horses are now a novelty, entertainment, a hobby and there are no blacksmiths, wheel wrights, carriage builders.
Would you argue their industry should have been protected? It was IMPORTANT. It made JOBS.
WARNING: HERESY AHEAD.
GA is not a necessary part of the Australian economy. There is NO economic imperative for what we do. That is not to say we cannot deliver benefits and real economic value... but we MUST concentrate on delivering that value to the client at all stages in the supply chain.
If we cannot deliver that value, our prospective clients will find other ways of doing things and we will go the way of the Horse industry.
It is incumbent on ALL of us to play our part in delivering that value and instead of arguing about what coal miners are paid (those of them that still have jobs) let's get on with delivering good value and see what flows from that.
