Rubbish maintenance

[Gingerbread Man]

I hired a C172 from my local flying school today and was peeved to discover that the intercom did not work. I would have been more willing to forgive it if I hadn't gone on a checkride last week, where the intercom didn't work, and the instructor shrugged and said "sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't". Am I alone in thinking that this is a pretty poor attitude to have? After that checkride I asked if they could get someone to have a look at it, and they said they would. So when I switched the radio on today, I was less than happy. You can fly without an intercom though. Having no radio is a more serious problem, so cue radio silence as soon as I got up into the circuit! It turned out it was only one of the boxes, which was a blessing. I also noted that one of the lights I listed as not-working was still not working. Is this standard or does this show a complete lack of attention to the club aircraft?

I don't think I will fly there again, not specifically based on today, but based on a culmination of events that lead me to believe that the club is disorganised and unprofessional. Take the A/G radio guy in the tower, who, when asked for some circuit traffic information (due to poor vis in rain) replied "There's two". !! I don't give a :mad: how many there are, where are they!! :mad: One apparently was doing a fanstop, but turned out to be turning downwind about 5 miles away from the airfield.

Morons.

Rant over.

The usually cheerful Ginge ;)

[Squadgy]

Take the A/G radio guy in the tower, who, when asked for some circuit traffic information (due to poor vis in rain) replied "There's two". !! I don't give a how many there are, where are they!! One apparently was doing a fanstop, but turned out to be turning downwind about 5 miles away from the airfield.

There's no requirement for an Air/Ground operator to even be able to see the cct traffic - could be a receptionist with a handheld etc. I've been in to one place where the guy cooking breakfasts was doing the radio with and icom - it can be so variable from place to place :ugh:

[Gingerbread Man]

That's very true, I think I must have conveniently forgotten that so that I could be angrier with good reason. Does anyone else find that using a borrowed headset is always a mistake? I've been to a few places and they all have the same collection of knackered antiques that make your conversation sound like it is taking place in a blender full of marbles. I would buy my own, but, well, I fly!!! That's where all my money goes!

Ginge :p

[Jamongris]

I had a similar experience. I was doing about my 2nd or 3rd hours lesson with one school and the intercom didn't work, so the instructor was talking to ATC using a hand held mike and trying to shout instructions to me. That early on you really do need to hear what you're being explained and the whole lesson turned out to be a complete waste of time. I turned up a week later for the next lesson in the same plane and was told the problem was still the same. I declined the lesson and left the school after 6 hours.

This may well be a normal experience, but for me it was unacceptable. I understand your rant entirely :)

[Thumpango]

During my PPL training I have had a number of maintainance "issues"!

Whilst doing my pre-flight checks I tend to check that the spark plug lead is attached to the plug. On one occassion, much to my horror, the lead lifted clean away!

The CFI was a little annoyed...I think she thought I had pulled on the lead, which I hadn't.... "we don't normally check the plug leads" was the comment made.

Also have had the rubber rudder pedal covers held on with cable ties and leaking fuel from the ball valve in one of the the fuel drainers! This was dripping once every 10 secs. The comment I received here was "your only doing circuits and you have plenty of fuel!"

The intercom I have found is a major cause of problems and very off putting during training, I have had incompatible headsets from the instructor, earpads that become detached in flight, intermittent connections.

The other day I borrowed a set of headphones from the school I was hiring from and they were totally defective! Had to shut down and return to get an alternative pair! the answer to this was given to me by a PPL friend ... if you are serious about flying buy your own headset!!

[mazzy1026]

I think it's a case of trying to save money, and the overall result of that is reducing the overall safety. I believe there's no room for corner cutting in GA in order to save money - I would do as you have done and find somewhere better, even if it means an extra 5 quid or so per hour.

Regards,

Maz :ok:

[Gingerbread Man]

I think you've got it spot on Maz - it just seems to be penny-pinching. I do have my own set of DCs by the way. The reason I was trying to borrow some was for a passenger. I thought buying two headsets in case I took someone else up was a tad frivolous!

The much happier now that he's had some sleep Ginge :)

[mazzy1026]

Gotta admit, I borrowed a pair once for a flight (not a lesson, it was with a friend) and they were so crap, that we were declaring readability 1 to most people we spoke to. Feels like "once you have spent all your money with us and got your license, we don't give a to55 about you any more!"

Maz

[VP8]

Ginge

I got a second pair from ebay (£58 for a set of DC's 6months old) just for pax use safe in back of car

VEEPS:ok:

[IO540]

Gingerbread Man

What you describe is pretty normal in my experience.

[B2N2]

It might be normal but it shouldn't be.
Keep in mind however that a small discrepancy or even a multitude of small discrepancies do not automatically make an airplane unsafe or unairworthy.
The pedal anti-slip rubbers come of all the time so glue and some tie-wraps do the trick.
A once every 10 sec fuel droplet is not instant catastrophy either, mind you it needs to be fixed but not necessarily right here right now.
How many times have you "pre flighted" your car?
Yet you take it onto the motor way every day.
Before the war starts, I know thats not aviation etc etc etc but you have to be realistic about discrepancies; is it safe? Is it legal? If yes on both
then it's the PIC decision to fly or not.
You can't expect a school or club to patch up every scratch, there's not enough of a profit margin to do so.
Cheers
:ok:

[IO540]

B2N2

I don't think anybody suggests the planes are illegal. Transport CofA, have to get a 50hr check and the JAR145 firm doing it is highly unlikely to be completely crooked.

The question is how bad a plane can get while still being legal for VFR training (or IFR training in VMC, keeping OCAS as far as is reasonable :O ), and from what I've seen the answer is "very bad indeed".

The training business is doing itself a huge dis-service operating stuff like that. In general, only those pretty desperate to fly do a PPL today, and the business is missing out on a huge pool of people (including a lot of high earners) who choose to spend their time (and their ample money) on other leisure activities.

Not that there is a real solution; there are few alternatives to the old iron.

p.s. I hope you are joking about the fuel droplet every 10 seconds! Where-ever that is coming from is seriously defective.

[Final 3 Greens]

At one club, I experienced the following defects within 3 weeks:

-fuel cross feed pipe leaked into cabin, onto me, rejected aircraft during taxi

-brake flexible pipe not secured to wheel strut - rejected aircraft during preflight

-PTT detached from yoke during flight, used RHS yoke button

After that I did not go back, who knows what might have happened next

Then I found a place in Cambridgeshire who maintained there aircraft to the highest standards and I never looked anywhere else again.

The feeling of confidence that gave me was many times the value of the £20 extra per hour.

IO540, the poster said the droplet was coming from the ball valve in the fuel drain, presumably under one wing, so I can understand the FI not being overly concerned as a one off, but if it isnt fixed quickly, it doe s suggest a potentially lax approach to maintenance

[skydriller]

How many times have you "pre flighted" your car?

If my car was older than I am with said technology like most of the aeroplanes out there most of us regularly hire, then I would definitely pre-flight my car every time its used!!

If however the technology in the aeroplane was even half as up to date as my current vehicle I guess the concept of "jump in and fly" would be possible too.....

....just a thought, but then its been discussed before...

SD..

[englishal]

What I have experienced....(and hate).....is when you rent an aircraft, you turn up, and during the pre-flight you find that the transponder is missing and half the radio nav gear as its been put in another aircraft.......when you were expecting it.

[maggioneato]

My experience of club hacks was that the defects were only sorted when the aircraft went in for routine maintenance, minor defects were never rectified in between. I supose old aircraft will always have something wrong being used all the time. One aircraft I had booked, the vacuum pump had packed up. I was told, no problem, the weather is VFR. No way was I taking that. I got so fed up with it, the only way forward was to join a private group where any defects are sorted as they occur, and it's a lot cheaper to fly per hour once you have parted with the initial outlay.

[IO540]

This debate is entirely concerning G-reg planes - being self fly hire of planes from flying schools or clubs.

It's fun to reflect that if this debate was concerning N-reg planes, we would be looking at an immediate ban on all flights. The CAA/DfT would love nothing more than evidence of poor maintenance on these. They are really scraping out the barrel to find some, without success.

But, the condition of the G-reg fleet will always be acceptable to the CAA because the CAA gets a nice bit of money out of it: CofA fees, and money from the firms that maintain them.

They get even more from some operators, in the AOC fees. A firm that has an AOC has to do something really dreadful to get prosecuted for anything.

Call me cynical...

[A and C]

As the owner of a number of aircraft that I lease to a flying club I an faced with two problems on the maintenance front.

The first is that I can't lease a new aircraft to a club for any more money than I can lease a twenty year old one because the average club member only sees the cost of a flying hour NOT the state of repair that the aircraft is in and so I would be a fool to invest large amounts of money in new aircraft when the same amount of return.

The other problem is that when you buy a twenty year old aircraft you have to start putting right twenty years worth of lack of investment. In three years of leaseing I have yet to make a penny of income......... Yes the value of the aircraft has increased and the servicability has increased but untill all the aircraft have new engines, paint ,radios etc then there is NO INCOME.

I'm in this for the long haul so the income is not a problem to me but most businesses are short term and will not invest in the aircraft in the way that I do and so they cheapskate by doing the very minimum amount of maintenance that they can get away with so the club members just get what they pay for ....crapp aircraft.

[IO540]

A and C

I have no wish to make smarta**e observations, but I think anyone who is into "business" would immediately observe that you are chasing the wrong market.

Whether this is helpful is another matter; it probably isn't because what other market is there?? If you just rent out planes then you have no control over the customers. But it's worth a look at what somebody else could do, I think.

In almost any business, the spectrum of customers runs from the wonderful to the downright sh***y. So, how does one position oneself close to the nicer end?

All the time one is playing in a market in which most customers care only about price, one will be constantly be serving customers at the latter end. This is true whether it is self fly hire, or washing up liquid. I've been in my own business (hi-tech electronic design & manufacture, industrial market) for 27 years, so this is stuff I do know.

Back to the question about market positioning, the general answer is that the quality of one's customers is determined largely by the perceived quality of one's corporate image. This is a fact; it isn't from some Tom Peters slogan book. It stems from basic psychology: a man who has not washed for 5 years will end up going around with a group of other men who also haven't washed for years. (It also explains who so few women fly, which in turn means that most men with interesting lives choose to do something else; lack of women is death to most leisure activites especially ones that cost serious money).

The question then is whether there are customers in GA who are at the former end and, if so, how does one reach them?

IMV there is no doubt the way to reach such a group is to offer quality aircraft, at a higher price as necessary. I know of a few ventures that tried this and all failed - but they left out the essential ingredient: marketing the product correctly. (Some also tried with brand new Cessnas and such - a complete waste of time doing it with WW2 designed planes) It's no good doing what most schools/clubs do, which is park a few planes at the local airfield and stick an ad in the local paper for trial lessons. Especially if it is a cheap and dirty (or free) local paper predominantly read at the local council estate. Or the advert looks cheap and dirty, which they usually do. Most local papers don't reach a quality customer base anyway.

What's needed is a marketing push aimed at the more affluent pilots, using lifestyle magazines. Pitch flying as something exciting and sporty, perhaps on the aero front more than the touring front but both are essential.

What I don't know is what planes one should have. For aeros (not my field) there appear to be great choices. For going places, well the DA40TDi would be interesting if they can make the engine run further than Compton Abbas.

Additional detail would be what one actually teaches. This is going to be tricky. Obviously one has to somehow grind through the official ex-WW1 CAA syllabus, but that leaves the PPL with insufficient knowledge to go anywhere half interesting, not to mention no instrument options for when the weather is even slightly suspect. What's called for is a modernised PPL course. Nothing stops a business running a CAA-compliant PPL which incorporates the extra stuff but it could not be advertised as a "45 hour" PPL :O

I doubt whether anything will ever happen. The CAA doesn't appear to have any interest in this, and neither do certain other organisations because turning out pilots who can fly usefully isn't in the interest of the flight training business. Even if it is needed to make a business break out of the mould. A continual decline in GA appears unavoidable but if I won the jackpot I know what project I would have a go at :O

Any revitalisation of GA needs modern planes and a syllabus to match the high expectations of modern people. The current ICAO/CAA stuff is a relic from decades ago, when flying was a pursuit of exciting adventurous men and when accurate navigation and all the present-day airspace cr*p didn't matter.

This debate has been done to death here in the past, usually ending up with a number of people having a go at me resenting my suggestion that they are "low quality customers" etc.

[Crashed&Burned]

It's not an excuse, but most flying clubs are run on a financial shoestring and every part of their operations suffers from lack of investment.

As users, we are, of course to blame. We always seek out the cheapest hourly rate, so it's either run the club cheaply or don't run it at all. Every aspect, including flight safety is affected.

One admittedly crude, rule of thumb is to look at the funiture in the clubhouse. If it consists of the owner's old living room sofa and some second hand armchairs, it is likely that the state of the aircraft will not be much better!:hmm:

[Final 3 Greens]

It's fun to reflect that if this debate was concerning N-reg planes, we would be looking at an immediate ban on all flights Some of the worst aircraft that I have been offered on rental were N Reg.

However, they were USA based.

The CAA and DfT have the mandate to legislate and require compliance. Some people have had a good few years taking advantage of FAA licensing in the UK and nothing lasts forever.

Now remind me, how many G-Reg aricraft are operated in the USA?

[GroundBound]

We always seek out the cheapest hourly rate

Well it might be true for some, but not necessarily for all.

I try to assess most things by "value" rather than cost - what do you get for what you pay?

I quit using a particular club because I thought their aricraft were rubbish and poorly maintained. I joined a nearby club with better maintained aircraft, and a better atmosphere with interested instructors - yes it cost more per hour, but it was worth it.

Mind you, if you have to scrape every penny together to fly, this isn't always possible, sadly.


GB

[Footless Halls]

Getting back to what (I think) was the original question, I think the answer is to go by instinct.

Minor 'slip-ups' in maintenance are not necessarily serious (though they may be), but the critical point is how much attention you (the customer) is getting from the club or school (the supplier). Don't settle for second best. It's your hard earned money you're spending and you should make sure you give it to someone who takes you seriously as a fellow pilot. You can be sure that if they're not bothered to respond to your concerns over little things they'll also be unhelpful over things which are big (to you at leasr).

i've learned from experience that there are some wonderful people in aviation, and I'll go a long way to fly with, and learn from, them. And there are others who are fine in their way, but who I do not want to give my hard-earned cash.

So follow your instincts and move, you're sure to do better elsewhere.

[B2N2]

Probably one of the best answers yet Footless.
Minor discr. are to be expected even on privately owned planes.
It's all about how you are treated as a member or customer.
Unfortunate if you have to drive a long way to the next airport though.



edit for spellcheck...:ok:

[Footless Halls]

I speak (type?) from experience. i had exactly the same experience as you - my flying, my confidence and my enjoyment all went backwards as a result of trying to 'fit in' to an unsympathetic environment. Now I drive an extra hour each way so I can fly with, and learn from, people I respect and regard as friends.

[Julian]

Have to agree, have paid some pretty steep hourly rates for aircraft hire only to find INOP stickers over half the kit. £130+ for a PA28, in my books thats not running on a showstring.....its taking the p1ss.

I have now swapped clubs and drive nearly 2 hours instead of the previous 20mins down the road because of this. Although the club facilities are not as nice the aircraft are in a much better state and its an airport instead of a grass strip.

Another reason why flyers are opting for shared ownership I guess!