Sorry Aussie Bob, what planet do you live on?

The days of the single Narco COM 11A, no TXPDR and a whiz wheel are well over

A Garmin GTN 750 primary and 650 backup with remote audio and voice activation, mode S with ADSB, traffic awareness, or TCAS, TAWS, and some weather info, storm scope or WX radar, comes to .........you tell me. Is an AFCS part of your avionics package? There goes another 40k...Garmin 500 ....ka ching!..but wait, 172 with dual G1000, surely that will be real cheap.....its only a 172...

Once you have flown with modern avionics package you will understand the safety and SA benefits. Do you drive an EH Holden still?

You can pay more for a Commodore than an avionics package! Dont worry about the Land cruiser, you would rather drive a series 1 landrover by the sound of it.

I operate a small fleet and am happy to pay $100 + per hour for LAME and avionics specialists. They sweat blood to do the job, at least the ones i use do. Well done guys, thanks and keep up the good work. Charge properly, stay in business and the true cost of such support will become a reality. Dont get squeezed by the ' squeezers' out there who whinge about the cost of keeping a puss barge flying. The better an aircraft is maintained ( not neccessarilty the more it is maintained) the more reliable and cost effective it becomes.

If you cant afford maintenance costs, you cant afford an aircraft, This is not the place to cut corners or seek budget solutions.

HD

Please tell me how much per hour you pay to service your BMW, WHAT?, you dont have a BMW, you cant afford it??? Well ok, how much to service your Volkswagon at your local Ultratune? at mine its $110 per hour and he doesnt have to sign for it or risk prosecution, Your LAME sounds cheap to me. :ugh:

Check out the thread started by Jaba about Transponder installs and EO's if you think that some places are failing aircraft owners by trying to save money where reasonable and not safety critical...

Harley D, go buy a 20K 172, there are several examples around this figure in the current Trader. Fit 40K of avionics to them then try and get 60K on a resale.

Good luck.

I think you misread my post, certainly there are 40k avionics bills, I had one higher once and got sweet FA except an auto pilot. Sadly the plane's value remained static.

As an lame with over 30 years in the industry I find some of the comments here quite offensive. Lames are leaving more than ever due to the low pay poor conditions and the high price of complying with casa regs. Your local car service centre you pay more an hour at. Yet you all complain about your bills. I know how much is cut of most bills. Yet you all still complain. As I've said here before most people in ga cannot afford to own an aircraft. That the basic truth.

I have to agree with yr right. In building my experimental so far I have been humbled and re-educated over and over again, and I thought I knew what I was doing because I have an engineering degree and had some time with airlines and aerospace.

Just because an aircraft looks like its built of car components doesn't make it so. I learned the hard way that quite often you do things the reverse of how you do them on a car - and for good reason. Bolts that you would wrench the crap out of on a car are given a gentle torquing. Galvanised wire is preferable to stainless for controls and so on and so on. Even the brakes bleed "the wrong way" compared to a car.

In my opinion there is no comparison between car mechanics and LAMES, the latter is a skilled expert. The former usually a mere spanner twister.

To put that another way, it doesn't take much to screw up or break something on an aircraft during maintenance you need to be really stupid to do the same to a car.

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":

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" :ugh:

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... :yuk:

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. :hmm:

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. :D

Oh yes we suppose to know everything and every ones aircraft intermitly and we all taught this as we go along. What's wrong with you fellas really. How the " f$&@" did you think we learnt in the first place. And as for cost this old aircraft require more and more work and inspections. It would be proven that who ever looking after your aircraft must not be to bad as you are still flying. As this air aft age bolts seize screws break and cracks appear. This is the world we live in. As for not knowning what the operator is doing in regards for cost we'll that is just crap. We know what happens. The problem is that operators under cut each other. The lame that's been subsidieing the industry forever. Time has come around now ( and it's going to get worse ) that lames are leaving and no one coming though to replace the looses. Why. As I've said low wages poor conditions and casa. Go rock the pilot tree and wear a hard hat. Rock the engineering tree and you will find it's empty. Whine all you like it's not going to fix it's self and why is that. Look at your own comments. Why would you won't to do it. Casa changed all the lic system to try and fix the problem with the instant engineer just add water we'll that's not going to work. You only start to really learn when you have your lic. And until you have and done the hard yards exams and finally get your hands on the little book you no one knows the resonposabilly that is then given to you. I've said it before and I'll say it again the hardest word as a lame is to say no. That means when your aircraft is broken is not going any where till it's fixed. And as I've said most of you can't afford to keep your aircraft. Don't blame the lame for this. It's about time if you think it's so easy go do the exams get your own lic do your own work

Cheers

I left a job when the cleaner was getting paid more than I was. I was looking after a twin turbine 19 seat aircraft. Wtf. This is not un common. But why would anyone come into an industry that dose support ' understand or really give a flying "f£€£ ". Won't hurt me in the future but will hurt you fellas if you continue the attitude on which your on now.

HLB,

I didn't notice much heresy... Just the sad truth.

Much in the same way that Telcos cover 97% of the population, 97% of the population don't know anything about GA, and what they would know is limited to "that's small planes, right? Like Cessnas? Isn't it dangerous cos they crash all the time?". And I would say they are viewed almost exclusively as the playthings of the rich.

What does 97% of joe public need with a GA aircraft? Apart from the occasional scenic flight and those that need to go regional towns not serviced by airlines, not much.

And that is why politicians don't care, and why nothing regulatory will change. Not enough pressure and I doubt there ever will be. There aren't enough of us to make that big a fuss, and by and large the public don't care.

And with that in mind, you're spot on, there is no real incentive to put customer service as an important part of the service for LAMEs. They have owners over a barrel. It's almost like they are our customers, but we still pay them!

YrRight,

I am not attacking LAMEs.

There are good and bad LAMEs and Good and Bad operators and good and bad aircraft owners.

As an operator, one of the things spurring me to own my own aircraft was the fact many aircraft owners are dead****s looking for the cheapest nastiest solution to everything. The aircraft would end up under lien from the MRO or awaiting parts on stop credit from the owner... then I would bail out the aircraft to get it flying and hey presto the owner takes it elsewhere and it ends up in the same cycle.

Attacking everyone is not going to help the industry.

Blaming CASA is not going to help the industry.

If the hamburger shop you go to makes crappy burgers, you gotta either
1/. Make do with crappy burgers or
2/. find a better burger shop.

Every service industry is the same and I have paid lots of money for bad maintenance... but ended up going elsewhere and buying a better burger.

If we give bad service, the customers stop coming. You can't blame the customer.

Cheers

I don't understand how you can say we have the industry or yourself over a barrel. All we try and do is our job correctly to the m/m and to the regs. Neither of which as lames we have control over. Most operators treat the Maint org as there personal bank. Bet you can't get your car serviced and pick it up and say I'll pay you later. Sorry sir you need to pay for it before it leaves the premises. But you expect credit from your maintenance org. If you don't like your maintence org take your aircraft else where that's a given. But it's not the lame fault that your aircraft a piece of ****. As what often happens you get it for a service after it's been neglected for ages. You get it up to speed then you cry poor on how much it cost. Then next service you take it else where. Next service chep as cause all the work is done. This continues until it's back again and the cycle continues. Mm and whilst you may be happy to have your plugs competely worn and be happy with that the lame has a duty of care to the person sitting next and behind you as they have no idea what's been done. It's also not the lame responsabity for the cost of parts if they required to make the aircraft serviceable. If you can't afford to maintain your aircraft to the standard required sell it and then rent an aircraft for your flight.

At the end of the day it's not the lame responsabity to subaduze your flying pleasure. Until you wake up up and relize this quickly there won't be any lames and then you will have to pay.

In the marine industry we have a saying: "no cash, no splash". It don't float until the bill is paid.

In the Aviation industry we have decided the only way to make money is to own your engineers so you can control the output.

I notice yr right and sunfish continue to talk about money when the real problem, and the complaint from Jack R and self, continues to be quality and competence and customer service.

I guess it's easier to just argue money. :rolleyes:

We'll I'll say this. Hit a dog long enough and he will bite you. Now call the Maint org or the engineer the dog and the costumer has the stick. I had one aircraft in the shop doing a service. The opposition aircraft had a minor problem. We stop work on the service to fix the small problem. Only to have the owner come down and abuse us of not working on his aircraft as he was in first. I said small problem and we will be back in the other aircraft soon. After more abuse I said we'll when his aircraft is in and you have a small problem pleased don't bring your aircraft down you will have to wait till we finish the other aircraft in future. So off he went knowing he just made a cock of himself. Service goes both ways. Like the aircraft I just down out of a service and a week later on it's first flight it had a problem. Owner came in abusing us for doing a **** job only to have a C/B failure. Next day his other aircraft in same type so we changed out the same C/B as the other aircraft. What next abuse for changing it out. wtf. It's an impossible to please most owners. We the evil devil. Al we do is cost you all money.

Sounds like lots of people abuse you yr right. I wonder why?

Actually that don't bob. Only the fools do !

What about a charter yr right? Thought about it?

What about a charter sorry you lost me ?

I believe he means your business charter,
Your goal, commitment to customers etc