Cost of 100 hourly's
 

I've done some research on the cost of 100 hourlys for our Seneca. Fixed price 100 hourly / annuals seems to be taking hold in the US. On the web I've found 10 shops in the US and one in Europe offering fixed price annual / 100 hourly's.

The prices range from $2,500 to $3,000 (converted to Aussie Dollars) + oil & filters. The most common would be about $2,800 based on 32 hours and about $85/hour (rounded figures). This is based on the Piper inspection schedule. The good old Aussie CASA Schedule 5 should have a couple of less labour hours.

The European one was to the UK CAA schedule which is regarded as more arduous that either CASA schedule 5 or the Piper Schedule and was still under $3,000 Aussie.

This is a bit more than half an accepted Australian price for a standard Seneca 100 hourly (with no additional parts, no heater inspections, prop, governor or mag inspections, etc).

Why are we so expensive?

I'm sure outrageous hangar rent at airports like Moorabbin is part of the answer, but it doesn't explain it all. What are the other factors?

This fixed cost, for the service and insp only I take it, would not include any rectifications necessary as a result of the inspection? On a new build aircraft fixed price servicing could be possible, just as it is now common place for the first 5 yrs on a new car purchase. I doubt that any responsible Maintenance provider would promise a fixed price on a 30+ year old airframe! at least not without knowing the aircraft intimately.

Old Akro - When you can find any spanner-wielder in Australia who only charges $85 hr - let me know where he is. He'll be suddenly overwhelmed with work - unless, of course, he produces a toolbox full of nothing but hammers and chisels. :(

Car dealerships are charging $100 hr minimum, and large numbers of repairers charge $120 hr.
With LAME's getting paid around AU$70 hr and AME's getting AU$60 hr, then the hourly rate needed for aircraft repair work would have to be around AU$140 hr, to cover all the business and employee expenses.

One track- I'll think you'll find your Lame pay rates are a little excessive. GA lames with basic tickets, as would be needed to certify something like a Seneca, command approx half of what you claim. At least they do in places like Moorabbin. Most shop rates around Melbourne are between $85-$100ph. Avionics shops are more expensive but they are just so much more intelligent!:ugh:

For a start, the fixed price annuals are actually fixed price inspections - they don't actually cover the cost of fixing/rectifying any problems that the inspections show up.

Here in Oz, I suspect most owners simply hand the keys over to the LAME at annual time and say - "fix it".

I think a lot more owners in the USA are more "hands-on" in respect of having a say in what gets done at the annual, especially with the advent of companies (like one beginning with "Sav...") that specialize in helping owners manage the maintenance of aircraft. Could also be that the FAA system of regs does help as well but that's a whole different thread...

Anyway, over there, after the inspection is done, the owner gets a phone call or written quote for the rectification work that needs done and he then says yea or nay to each item, with or without assistance of said organisation...

So really, while the fixed price inspection does sound cheaper, in reality I'd say most of the time folk would pay more than the advertised price, unless of course you took your plane away from the shop and got someone else to fix it (which under the FAA regs you are apparently allowed to do...)

Factor in the tyranny of distance to get a part from Wichita, KS to Perth, WA and you see why it's all so much more expensive...

where in OZ are AME's getting $60 an hour? most i know are struggling to get over $35

What the AME is paid and what is charged to the customer are two different things (just like pilots!). ;)

Cost of 100 hourly's
 

No doubt about the going rate for a LAME - it's $85 - $90 per hour as the charge out rate. In round figures, an employer needs to add 35-40% on to his LAME's pay rate to cover the payroll adders, then more to get recovery to pay for his hangar, specialist tools, vehicle etc.

Well, I guess Sigma Aerospace was absolutely bowled over by applicants in this case, then .... :confused:

SCOUT - Aircraft Maintenance Engineers (LAME)

Good equipment fitters and wrenchmen here on the left coast can command top-class money virtually anywhere. I would have thought LAME's and AME's would have been on similar income.
I was paying a top-class diesel mechanic $150,000 p.a. as my workshop leading hand, in 1994 - and he could have got similar money elsewhere.
Today, those same people can command $250K p.a. in the heavy equipment industry - and any of them with a little nous have their own contract repair business.

The problem is not of the spanner time. It is all the non productive paper time.

Having said that there is also a lot of pencil whipped annuals and owners or subsequent owners discover later why the earlier annuals were less expensive.

I think all going well and no defects you can do one for that. So long as your sneaker is in good nick.

Once again one track you are mistaking a GA lame for one with tickets on dash8/ATR. A group 1/5 LAME's licence doesn't mean much in an environment like that.

I think you will all find that running any repair operation in Australia is more expensive than running one in the U.S.
Wages are generally lower overall in the U.S., as compared to Oz (do U.S. LAME's get substantial gratuities for an inspection done well? :E) - and business costs in general in Oz would be higher, because the U.S. Govt is more favourably inclined towards businesses.

An employer in Oz has 9% superannuation to pay, workers compensation costs are horrendous, and penalty and holiday rates are higher than in the U.S. (and I'm not begrudging what employees get - wrenchmen earn it, AFAIC).

Saratogapp's estimate of employee costs is exceptionally conservative - it's actually more like 100% of an employees wage. So, for a wrenchman on $35 an hr, the employers total cost is more like $70 an hr for that man.
Then business costs such as workshop operating costs (rent, power, water, miscellaneous taxes and charges) have to be added to that $70 hr.
Then a profit margin, usually aimed at around 12.5%, has to be added to that total.
Thus, the reason why $100 an hr is usually a minimum charge, for anyone who's lifting a spanner in a workshop.

Because you don't have mechanics or chuck in his pickup doing work down there he is not "authorised". You have approved facilities, engineers engine airframe, avionics radio etc, lots of systems and paperwork ( do you wipe your bum before or after the toilet better check the procedure and fill in the forms ) blah blah blah. It has been over complicated by your regulator and the result is no better and a lot more expensive. :ugh:

How to make it complicated and hard do it in Australia.

The b&llsh#t paperwork charges my LAME has to do was half the cost/hours of my last 50 hourly... Not grudging my lame, but the paper jockeys in YSCB that require it...

Agreed!!!:D

I am glad i brought that up :}

And as pointed out before, for any business to be viable in terms of actually being a healthy business, you need to take the direct cost of the hourly rate and x 2.2-2.4 depending on the scale and industry type of the operation.

That becomes your TRUE cost, before you add any profit margin. So even at $100/hr + GST the LAME shop is not rolling in it.

Apply this to electrical contractors where the sparkies are charged out for virtually all the working hours a day, and you get $85-95, but in an industry where the staff are often required to do a lot of research, education or other necessary but not necessarily direct customer work, then you can see why it is not hard to get $150+GST. I charge my engineers out at that. If it is a 2-3 hour job on site the rate is $175, because of all the odd jobs surround that that they have to do.

Makes the LAME costs not so bad.

I saw an article in the USA recently and their rates were not much different to ours and in some states of the USA they were the same. In some states it could be the A&P's are all work from their truck guys and have lower costs, so apples and oranges comes to mind.

Have a good week y'all :ok:

I wouldn't have a problem paying a LAME $150 an hour............if they knew WTF they were doing, it's that learning curve thingo mentioned above that irritates me. I'm not going to pay an AME or LAME to learn on my plane.

I've had one very good experience with a particular avionics shop on the Gold Coast who was upfront with this very thing. The manager said he hadn't installed the gear and set up I wanted so he came up with a very good price that left something in it for him & me. There were issues that related to billable time down the track that we negotiated. I've also had some pretty average 'got you by the balls' stuff, this has far outweighed the good.

It's not the floor AME or LAME's fault particularly. There's something seriously wrong with this box ticking way of training apprentices. Non aviation trades are a joke as well. You need to park your arse under a tradies stewardship for a period of time regardless of the boxes ticked.

I've been managing a nice Panther Navajo here in Florida for number of years. Its maint. mob charge the owner $65/hr, and often do small things for no charge. They know every rivet on the plane and will come out at any time if needed to get a flight out. Now that its back to being used in 135 ops ('charter') - which is where I first started flying it about 7 years ago - it & its log books have been subject to FAA scheduled & random inspections and always passed with a clean record.

I'm very happy with the maintenance!

LAME's, AME's and cost
 

I don't have a problem with the hourly cost, it is getting the person to actually do the work in anywhere that is an economical method.

The worst charge I had was for a PA31-350, where there was a 3 hour charge, no travel, nose in workshop and supplied battery and paperwork from Aviall [I took old battery away]. I have done the same job, just takes 19 minutes and an endorsement of MR.

Have lots of other examples, so I developed a work list of times by actually timing the L/AME - doesn't compare and am sure people are being charged a guestimate.

The problem with that 19 minute job is;
A. It has to go smoothly....no worn bolts, nuts, clsmps etc.
B. You need to add the time for you to find the LAME, discuss the problem, he clears the space, tows the plane, sources the battery, raises the paperwork, goods receipts it, does the change over, disposes of the packaging, takes the battery to the recycle place(done at a later date), clean up put tools away, push plane out and chin wag with you while you tell warries about the last battery.
C. Fills in the MR and raises your invoice.
D. Pays the credit card fees....or chases you for payment

Yep.....19 minute job. ;)

Then there's also the preparation of the new battery. Read up what you are supposed to do, and if you're fitting a new battery in 19 minutes you are not doing it properly.
You'd be the first one in for a whinge if there was some problem with the new battery, too! And you'd be jumping all over the place if you found that the ginger beer hadn't fitted your new battery properly!!! (Like, if he did it in 19 minutes)

Perhaps that too!....not all are like that though ;)

Businesses aren't allowed to put a margin on their parts now? Why should they supply the battery at cost and then charge you 19mins labour ($26.91 on a $85 hourly rate). That type of business model wouldn't allow them to turn the power on so they could print the invoice! Just because aviation is your hobby doesn't mean it's everyone else's:ugh:

If the battery was a dry charged gill lead acid type the activation and initial charging instructions start in chapter 5.2 of the below linked manual
This would take Substantially longer than 19 mins.

http://www.gillbatteries.com/pdfs/Fl...ice_Manual.pdf

Hmmm....the regulatory burden.
Wonder how long till we see NZ maintenance only workshops in Australia?
Sensible regulations, half the maintenace costs aint rocket science!

So activating, charging and installing the battery in accordance with the manufacturers instructions to ensure that optimum performance and service life are achieved is due to "regulatory burden"

Anyone know of any NZ-approved maintenance outfits on the east coast?

Serious question

Q) Why is it that the United States is the only country in the world where a mechanic can work on a private aircraft on his/her own WITHOUT an approved maintenance organisation ?

The United States invented the aircraft Boeing/Douglas/Lockheed/Martin also internet, telephone, electricity, lightbulb went to moon and still has by far the largest numbers of aircraft no 121 air carrier crashed for a few years 7100 flights cancelled due ice snow ONE DAY last week.

Did the Europeans bring in all these rules ?

Q2) Why does Australia have a love/hate relationship with USA ?

On one hand bloody yanks are dodgy look at the 1500 United Airlines/Delta Jets not as good as Qantas ( car full of engineers to sign the tech log) , the other oh in the US you can do this this and this ???? :confused:

To recap a bit. Our twin 100 hourly's cost generally &5k - $8k with the price of a 100 hourly with no remedial work being around the $5k mark. The LAME we use is the cheapest / best of 4 I have direct experience with. He's at a regional airport where his hangar rent is relatively low.

When I speak with other twin owners they seem to support that $5 k is pretty much as good as it gets.

I became curious and started looking at US costs. This is where I got the figures of 32 hours / $2800 + parts ( or about $3,000 total). I also searched some forums ( notably Beechtalk) where I found some good, authoritative and recent posts where twin owners were reporting actual billed costs in line the prices I found advertised - so they seem real.

So, there seems to be about a $2k ( exchange rate adjusted) gap between US prices and Australian prices.

Why?

One reason is the typical hourly shop rare in the uS is $85 vs the Australian $100. This is I suspect mainly about higher hangar rental, insurance, electricity, etc.

But 32 hours x $100 = $3200 + $300 for oil & filters & music consumables and there is still a fair gap to typical US prices.

Why does it seem to take more labour hours to do the same job in Australia? Bearing in mind we are working on Americam built aircraft with American specified maintenance schedules. In fact we use the CASA schedule 5 which is reputed to be easier / less thorough / cheaper than the manufacturer schedules.

The argument that it takes longer to service these old aircraft because of calendar airframe age us patent nonsense. Except for the commercially used twins ( eg Chieftan) most twins are below 5,000 hours total time and are more commonly hangar end than singles. Our aircraft is a low time, over maintained, babied thing compared with any car, boat, or other similar mechanical device.

If there are CASA imposed work practices that slow down productivity, then we should be trying to push back against it. There is a strong argument that high maintenance costs are detrimental to safety. The higher the cost of a basic inspection, the more likely an owner is likely to not do additional preventative maintenance.

The reason it's expensive isn't just the aviation regulations. It's regulations in general and the box-ticking, paper-war, arse-covering mentality that our society has embraced. All of this stuff has to be paid for somehow and the guys that do this stuff won't wait 90 or 180 days to be paid.

We had a box-ticker come visit our factory unit (strata titled) to do the 3-monthly "fire safety check". He's paid by someone (everyone?) to swan around checking lights, doors, extinguishers, ticking boxes on his special iPad application and collecting signatures, just because some lawyer types decided it was a very necessary thing, irrespective of the cost-benefit.

What happened to personal responsibility? It's the cheapest way of dealing with the problem, usually. Insurance premiums are also a great motivator!

This is just one example of our follow-the-rules-based culture that we have to fund somehow. Of course the government loves it because it's all part of the make-work, full employment mantra. To hell with efficiency and the meaning of life.

4 Holer, perhaps you should familiarise yourself with the following CASA publication... Schedule 8 of CAR 1988.

http://www.casa.gov.au/wcmswr/_asset...rth/42zc_1.pdf

Here are a few gems from this document detailing what a PILOT can do.

Replacement of side windows in an unpressurised aircraft
Replacement of seat belts or harnesses.
Replacement of bulbs, reflectors, glasses, lenses or lights.
Replacement, cleaning, or setting gaps of spark plugs.
Replacement of batteries.
Changing oil filters or air filters.
Changing or replenishing engine oil or fuel.

why do hangars have lockable doors?

so that an owner can do maintenance undisturbed :E

I so wish there was a " like" button

VH-XXX, so your system allows a pilot to do some maintenance change/adjust spark plugs, change oil and oil filters BUT THE ENGINEER IS NOT ALLOWED to do it. The engineer MUST be working under a companies maintenance approval.

As they say in Texas " YOU CANNOT FIX STUPID" :ok:

Hi Mr 4 holer,
I understand under the current rules an engineer can fix defects without a company approval, he cannot however issue a maintenance release and fully jack an aircraft off the ground. He can perform an engine change without an approval.
This will probably change when CASA understands the new regs.

I might be dead by then

Add to that, an owner who thinks his toy is worth way way more than realistic market value and who can't really be bothered with you when you contact him.

The value of an aeroplane in Australia is the same as it would cost to buy and import a similar model from the US, no more, certainly not double!

Bob :ok:

Post Of The Year contender there mate :D

Simple formula, (((Price in USD x Exchange rate) + Ferry/Freight) + GST) + approx $15k to get it on the register.

Just a bit more on "mark-ups" here.....

Suppose you've just fitted a battery that you sold to your favourite customer. You paid $300 for it, and sold it to your favourite customer for $300 - because he's such a good bloke! And because your such a champion engineer, and such a good bloke too, you charge 19 minutes of your time, for the work.

Next week he's back. There's something wrong with the battery you just sold him. The aircraft wont start! Quick - you must drop whatever you're doing and save the situation.

So you dump your second favourite customer, (whose aircraft you were working on right then) and run off to do what you can to help your mate, who's by then threatening legal action.

You find that the new battery is faulty. You did a great job, but the battery you just sold was a dud when it left the factory. The bloke who sold it to you says "No worries, just bring it back and we'll sell you another one. When we send the one we sold last week back to the bloke we bought it from, and he checks it out and confirms it's a dud, we'll give you a credit for it. That should only take three months or so. You'll have to pick up the tab for the freight, though, and there's some forms to fill out."

So you pull the dud out, get another new one, and fit it. It all took a couple of hours, and cost you another $300. At least your customers aircraft is going again, but he's not happy, and reminds you that he'll expect a fair discount on his next 100 hourly, because he's been jerked around. Well, at least that's better than getting sued, like his lawyer wanted, because he missed that charter. Yeah, he's a real good bloke.

Then you go back to your hangar, and your second favourite customer is waiting around to pick up the aircraft you'd promised an hour ago, and he's not happy......

You did nothing wrong, but didn't make wages for the day, because last week you were a good bloke!

This scenario might not happen all the time, but it does happen. A reasonable mark-up, allows the MRO to smooth out a few bumps so it can provide a better service.

DB Cooper, I think you misread UITA's post. He was not complaining about being charged 19 minutes for fitting. Nor was he complaining about a margin on the battery. He was complaining about being charged 3 hours to fit a replacement battery which was fully charged, ready to go in the hangar with the aircraft. At Aussie labour rates, I'm guessing this more than equalled the cost of the battery.

Pretty much the only use for dry charged batteries now is Aviation. They were phased out in automotive use nearly 40 years ago. The main reason they were phased out is that there was a very high warranty rate on them because workshops sold them after filling with acid but not charging before fitting them. Just fill with acid, put them in the car and take the money.

Dry batteries are made by assembling "formed" plates. That is plates that are put in a sulphuric acid bath and charged under the normal regime then dried. They restore a significant amount of charge immediately upon activation and will function immediately. However, alternators never fully charge a battery, so they will never fully restore in service and suffer premature failure.

The recommended retail price of the battery includes acid which is shipped separately in bottles and an allowance for the retailer to fill the acid and bench charge the battery.

In the old days, the most common cause of warranty was broken inter-cell welds. Improved manufacturing equipment eliminated this in the late eighties. That leaves the two major causes of warranty as sulphation from storage of wet batteries too long (lead acid batteries in storage require charging every 10 weeks) or in the case of dry batteries cutting corners in the activation process. Real manufacturing warranty issues on lead-acid batteries is below 1%.

All of this is, of course, being eclipsed by valve regulated lead-acid batteries which are sometimes called sealed lead-acid batteries. These use a very different manufacturing technology which the Japanese & Taiwanese manufacturers led the development to bring them to mass markets in the eighties & nineties. These batteries are much better for aircraft applications.

The third category are the spiral wound batteries (eg Optima & Orbital batteries). The development of these is routed in the old Australian Pulsar batteries developed by Pacific Dunlop. They are wet lead acid batteries (but sealed) and would be really excellent in aircraft, but no-one is interested in the cost of certifying them.

This is a long winded answer, but it illustrates that there is just a lot of nonsense talked to justify excessive labour charges. There should be enough margin in the battery price to cover filling & activation. The labour charged to fit the battery should be the reasonable time it takes to fit it and if you feel the need to add additional costs to cover warranty, then I'd suggest that you might need to take a look in the mirror because 3/4 of "warranty"claims on modern lead-acid batteries lie with the practices of the reseller / fitter.