C.A.M.O.
 

Sorry if this one has already been done to death, but I'm researching the charges made by maintenance organisations for ongoing charges under the C.A.M.O. scheme. As usual, there seem to be wild differences between them.

By the way, I understand that the value of Permit aircraft has increased significantly since the start of the scheme, as owners finally get fed up with the costs involved in running aircraft that require a C of A.

“By the way, I understand that the value of Permit aircraft has increased significantly since the start of the scheme, as owners finally get fed up with the costs involved in running aircraft that require a C of A.”

I think it is more a case that C of A aircraft have lost value. The exchange rate has also had an impact on second hand value, with some LAA aircraft being snapped up at “silly money” as the Euro value was more than the perceived £ value so European owners came over to the UK to acquire aircraft.

Rod1

EASA part M should put your annual maintenance bill up by about £700 if it is being done properly.

This charge it made because of the costs involved with employing one more person (at a small company) to do all the extra paperwork.

That's true, but £700 of unnecessary bureacracy which was being done already.

Really don't understand why people get so upset with the CAMO crap. Just go uncontrolled... the whole thing has barely made a difference to us. Sure, we pick up some slightly elevated costs c/o the additional red tape, but it's nowhere near £700.

Which is about 38% for us....

Thanks Guys, keep it coming! I've spoken to 7 different local organisations. The most expensive is 700 quid a year. Some charge a one off figure for the survey, and then nothing. Some have raised their hourly charge by a few pounds to cover it.

It seems that the smaller the organisation, then the more expensive it is. I run a business which has nothing to do with aircraft ( thank God ) and I'd love to have a system which locked customers into me, I can't imagine them wanting to pay me for it though!

pilotfa90

You still have more homework to do if you think you are locked in to one maintenance organisation!

The only aircraft (fixed wing) which need to be kept in a controlled environment (locked in as you called it) are above 2730 KG MTOM and those used for commercial air transport such as aircraft operated on an air operators certificate.

So your choice if you are not above 2730 or CAT.

1. Non-controlled evironment which means a full airworthiness review (15b) each year, as there are now pleanty of companies doing this this can be done from £300.00. but like anything I'm sure there will be cheaper!

2. The controlled environment means a full review (15b) then the tasks/ maintenance is controlled (hopefully!) for the next 12 months, due to the controlled status off the aircraft this is extended again after 12 months (15a) the same again after another twelve months. At year three a full review is carried out again, simples!
As stated on here previously, charges vary greatly and some do monthly some annual and some do both!

The views on lifed items and service bulletins also vary greatly between companies, engineers and CAA regional offices!

We all want safe reliable aircraft but none of us want to throw away perfectly good aircraft parts!

O.K. J.L., I know that I'm not strictly locked into one organisation; but if I decide to go the controlled route then it's a new survey each time I change which is far from ideal. I want to establish a good working relationship with one organisation, but the one that I'm currently with wants to charge me £700 per. year, which is £700 more than the guys down the road who seem to provide an equally good service.

In the maintenance manual of my aircraft there is an Overhaul and Replacement list.
Our CAA now says under Part M this list is compulsory and needs to be followed to the letter.
Most of these items were 'on condition' under the national maintenance regime, now changed to EASA Part M.
One owner on the field was quoted 40000€ to carry out all these items, he owns a 40 year old Bonanza.

The page 1 of the schedule reads (capitals as in the original text) :

" All overhaul and replacement times designated herein are but guidelines, NOT MANDATORY REQUIREMENTS. Climatic conditions, maintenance practices, and other factors may either extend or decrease these times. In the final analysis, adjustments in the overhaul and replacement periods should be determined by inspection findings and servicing experience."

if we have to follow the manual to the letter, how much is this worth? I would like to know how these TBO times are interpreted by various national authorities? This is for non-commercial private category SEP aircraft. Under the national regime we had declared most of these items 'on condition'.

I am speaking about landing gear motors, flap motors, landing gearbox, flap actuators, fuel selector valve, fuel boost pump etc. To me, on condition means fix it when it needs to be fixed, be it at 20 hours or 2000 hours.

The CAA over a number of years made it clear that the pricing policy was to make the 'controlled environment' cheaper than 'controlled'.

By staying 'controlled' the annual revisit of airworthiness would be minised, so it was equivalent to the old Star - Annual - Annual - Star.

But what actually happened was that there is no benefit. The annual charge equates to the annual review, but by then many of us had signed to to a 3/4-year contract.

Worse, the CAMOs have different views of what they are doing. Ours have told us what we need to do (go to one of their subsidiaries) and when - no discussion. I've had 2 licenced engineers contradict our CAMO's view, but they won't listen, and I can't find another CAMO to take us on. So I'm stuffed. I either do what they say and get the ARC renewed, or I have a worthless pile of metal.

There was supposed to have been a change in rules post-July 2009 which means that sub-1000kg aircraft can have their ARC renewed by suitably qualified engineers. There are very few, as the CAA has made it impossible. The secret is to go Permit, as I wish I'd done

There are few, but it certainly isn't impossible to get the approval. I know of two independent engineers - one south, one east - who have the approval and are making recommendations for ARC issue. PM me if you want details.

What keeps a lot of maintenance firms in business is the fact that there are very few hangars available in which you could put your plane and get a freelance engineer to work on it.

Most hangars are owned by somebody who either runs a maintenance business, or is a mate of somebody who does, and they make sure you don't do any work indoors.

I have been doing my own 50hr checks, occassionally with a freelance A&P/IA when some extra work needs doing, but we have to pick a reasonably non-horrid weather day, and in the winter this means hats, gloves, thermals, the works. It's easier to schedule it with an N-reg because the 50hr check doesn't have to be done on any precise timing, but nobody is going to do an Annual that way because one normally does Annuals during the winter and working outdoors for a week is simply not on; anyway one cannot put a plane on jacks when it's windy, etc.

It's an occassionally depressing manifestation of the ancient rule that property owners rule the roost.

I am comfused by this whole CAMO lark...

Our aeroplane is currently maintained on an EASA CofA by a maintenance organisation. We haven't signed any contract or any other stuff. They do the annuals and 50 hr checks.

This time we opted to do the annual in place of a 50hr to move the annual into the winter months, a) because we're going to try and sell and selling with a new annual makes sense, and b) they are giving us a good deal on the work.

But they did mention something about CAMO fee being due in 6 months time...what is all that about and what is it likely to cost?

Tell you what, I can't wait to be shot of the G reg and onto the N reg where everything is so much simpler and the amount saved in CAA fees will probably pay for the annual each year......

IO you can always borrow our hangar for your checks...we have a nice space heater available too and it is big enough for at least 2 aeroplanes;)

I'm thinking of moving to another CAMO.

Can anyone tell me who owns the documentation the CAMO holds about our aircraft. The maintenace programme and records of SBs and ADs that form our pack. Given that we've paid for it, can we have it when we transfer? Or does it belong to the CAMO?

“Most hangars are owned by somebody who either runs a maintenance business, or is a mate of somebody who does,”

Interesting comment. My strip has 5 hangars and no maintenance business. The surrounding area has a number of similar situations, with just two licensed airfields with maintenance business. Numerically, the Strip hangarage must outnumber the licensed airfields hangarage by 4 to 1 or more. Why not do a deal with a local farm strip to do your maintenance in the dry?

Rod1

Most of the comments above seem to be about the cost of the CAMO and how to avoid the extra costs that result from EASA part M and the replys seem to indicate that the Maintenance companys are making a lot of money from this.

The problem is that the industry has been forced to invest quite a bit of time and effort in implimenting EASA part M so whatever happens to part M the maintenance industry will have to recover that money.

Some of us in the industry had been telling the CAA & EASA that part M was unworkable on cost grounds and was of no safety benifit with some of the EASA practices being downright stupid. The level of oversight required for a two seat light aircraft is more approprate for a corperate jet.

The result has been that the burden of regulation is has encouraged owners to take as they see it the common sense approach to maintenance by fitting parts that have no paperwork trail themselfs and not recording this work in the logbooks when in the past they would have called an LAE to do the job and he would have made sure that the parts fitted had a release note and the job was properly recorded in the aircraft log books.


So far I cant see one thing that EASA has done within GA to improve safety and all the efforts that they make are so pooly implimented as to have the reverse effect from what was intended.

Nicely put A & C

I wish we could do as you say. Our replacement prop cost over £500 more than an identical one fitted to a permit a/c thanks to the dreaded Form 1, and it was the CAMO who insisted on changing it.

I've written to the Office of Fair Trading as the current legislation means that our CAMO can insist that we have to have work done (and where) or they won't sign off the ARC. They can refuse to accept any second or third opinion as they say that it is they who are responsible for our continued airworthiness.

Yes the CAMOs faced ludicrous charges from the CAA, but it is a restricted market and costs have gone up for all of us. As I am a hobby flyer I can't justify the cost of Part M and will be selling my beloved baby before the next annual.

Thanks EASA and s*d off CAA....:{

Robin
 

I have sympathy for your you but your CAMO also has the probelm that if is fails to meet the requirments of part M and the authoritys pick this up they will get the approval pulled and instantly have no business.

The trouble with your Propeller is not a Part M issue even under the BCAR system the prop would have needed a Form 1 or FAA 8130.

In a recent audit we have rasied some issues with the CAA and made it clear that we suspect (but cant prove) that the part M system is resulting in "underground maintenence" being carried out.

We are also have contacted the CAA CSO about a number of issues arising from the requirments for a Form 1 when parts are removed from one aircraft and fitted to another if full tracability is not an issue, we are also working on the full scope of GR24.

On a personal note we do a lot of Robin work and if yours is wooden we might be able to help you.

robin, You have a P.M. !

You can import a prop from the USA, with an FAA 8130-3. It is good enough for a G-reg, non-AOC ops.

Anyway, most props will come over with an 8130-4 - an Export CofA. Good enough for anything.

I once paid £11k for a prop with a JAA Form 1, which listed at $9k with an 8130-3.

" I think it is more a case of C of A aircraft have lost value "

I have a Cessna 150, early model, sound, needs an annual. First £6k buys it.
Pm me if interested.

( can't be doing with all this camo crap )

Quite - I still fail to see why the piece of paper for an identical item can add so much to the cost -in our case over 35%

The problem with the whole CAMO/Part M rigmarole is that a good number of maintanance organisations have used the opportunity to lift their customers skirts to pay for the record keeping that they should have been doing in the first place. They have also taken the opportunity to charge for it at engineering rates and not admin rates.

I blame the engineers to a large extent for their greed in seizing an opportunity to extract large sums of money and blame it on someone else.

But I think it will start to come home to roost. Shooting the goose that laid the golden egg was not a very smart move.

Lack of access to information :) :)

In GA, often the most appropriate saying is: in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is the king.

The other thing, of course, is that if you bought that $9k prop, the maintenance company is not going to make the margin supplying it (say £2k on a £11k supply) so their only income will be the installation labour at £50/hr or whatever.

One can make similar huge savings on avionics by importing from the USA - of the order of 40%, after allowing for VAT and shipping. But no major avionics shop will install the item, so this practice is limited to hands-on owners who work with a one-man installer who is probably happier not supplying the hardware as doing so would push him above the mandatory VAT threshold.

The downside is that there is no meaningful warranty on US imports, in that you cannot practically sue anybody. You can return the item... OTOH any warranty implementation in the UK tends to involve a flight to the installer's airfield, which (especially with hotels) is going to cost way more than whipping out the item and sending it back to the USA by DHL...

Bose-X
 

You have missed your calling in life with your talent for speaking with authority on a subject that you clearly know nothing about you should be writing for the Daily Mail.

The costs of setting up and maintaning the Part M approval are high, it is not just an admin job as you seem to think and the terms of the approval are clear on who should do and oversee the work, it is not something that can be done by someone that you picked up last week at the job centre.

We are required by the regulations to have another member of staff to carry out the EASA part M subpart G, this is why we have to charge the customer more, we are not ripping any one off, just covering the costs of doing the work that the law demands. The fact that in my opinion is total overkill is another matter, I cant do anything apart from make my views known to the CAA when I get the chance.

As always your comments on these forums are "good copy" but on this subject you are abusing your right to be wide of the mark.

Spoken like a true engineer!!!

The back room cost of you running your business should not be the burden of the customer. The cost of you keeping the records for you to operate within the regulation should not be the burden of the customer.

Notwithstanding my previous comment. There may be justification in the minds of some engineers in recovering those costs from there customers directly initially. However to keep coming back is inexcusable.

Care to explain how owners doing there own CAMO work outside of the controlled environment are managing if it is such a highly skilled task?

I don't have an issue with an engineer making an element of cost recovery. What I do have is an issue with them raping there customers. I had a friend who was charged 50hours of 'engineering' work to have his books checked for part M by the same engineering company that had being doing the work for 7 years. Makes me wonder what they hell they were doing for the previous 7 years?

Certainly each time I've spoken to CAA staff about it (actually its usually me pinning them in a corner and crying on their shoulder or shouting loudly at them), they express astonishment at the amount charged.

"Nothing to do with us", they say. "It shouldn't add any more work as the paperwork was being done already, it's just being done by a different part of the organisation".

So all in all, a fairly typical legislative screw-up with known, but unconsidered consequences.

We all told them what would happen but they ignored us. Then they brought in (late) the ELA1 exemption.

The French I note are setting up a grand-fathering right to continue a form of pilot maintenance with a licence for you to continue to maintain your own aircraft, if you have shown the ability to have done so previously.

Coming from a business point of view, I can see why an organisation might want to make an initial charge for a survey. but why do they need to keep on charging £700 ish. year in, year out. How much more work is the organisation doing than it was doing before? Even at £50 per.hour that's a lot of work for someone to keep the records straight. For an organisation who look after several aircraft of the same type, surely that's a money printing exercise?

I'm with bose-x on the assertion that I shouldn't be responsible for the back room costs of running their organisation. Imagine sending an invoice to a customer for £700 per.year for you as a supplier to keep up with Health And Safety legislation? If they need to put up their hourly rate to remain profitable, so be it. If I'm wrong then why is their wild variation in what is being charged?

I think that you guys are kidding yourselfs the customer always pays for the costs of a business......... that is just how it is, the differance is with part M the costs are clear and not hidden in the labour rate.

As to the extra costs for part M shall we start with the costs of re-jigging the worksheets, a weeks worth of time attending to extra CAA inspections (we also have to do the BCAR stuff as well) CAA charges, writing the new exposision etc etc etc.

All this takes time that should be used fixing customers aircraft......... and that is what brings the money in. If I do less "real work" & more paper pushing the costs have to be recoverd from a smaller customer base.

If took business advice from Bose-X and did not pass on the rising costs that I have then eventualy I would go out of business.

So the costs of part M are going to be passed on some how and some companys tweek the labour hours and some are honest about the costs of part M, If you think that you are getting Part M for only £300 then you are kidding yourself.

A&C - can the extra Part M paperwork be automated, using some suitable "IT" solution?

From my own perspective I'd already estimated the cost, based, as A & C has said, on the cost of employing new staff divided by the number of aircraft on their books.

The villains in this piece are EASA and the CAA in introducing the additional burden for no good reason.

It leads to some silly elements

Prior to Part M, I held and maintained the logbooks, my tech log had a countdown of hours to the 50 hour check and the annual.

Now I'm supposed to leave the books with the CAMO and to email them monthly the flight hours so they can update the logbooks and remind me the 50 hours are due. I tell them when I am going to do it, under pilot maintenance, so they send me worksheets. I send them back and get by return a release to service certificate.

In the past it was recorded once in the logbooks, but now we are funding the Royal Mail. I can't blame the CAMO but rather the way the CAA insist in their QA procedures.

Part M was designed along the assumption that we operate as airlines and have easy access to our maintenance organisations. A lot of us don't.

And if they ever get round (as they have said they want to do) to requiring the microlight and Permit fleet to operate under Part M rules, they'll have a riot on their hands.

Hang on, surely, having the MO writing up your flight hours in your logbooks (which are your property) from your emails, is somebody taking the p1ss...

Unless your plane has an AD whose applicability falls in between 50hr periods, what hours you fly between the 50hr checks is not the MO's business at all.

IMHO, of course :)

I am so glad to be N-reg. Write up all the logbooks myself, do the 50hr checks myself (with an A&P/IA who drives down) with some extras added, and for every Annual I can freely choose who does it. One of the best things is that if somebody doesn't do a job right I never need to use them again. Aviation maintenance is full of barrels, with aircraft owners bent over them.

I hold my logbooks. I complete them after the flight and when I get to 50hrs I let my CAMO know. They then let me know what is due and if anything fall between 50hr checks. A straight 50hr check I do myself. Anything that needs a lifed item replacing I take to them.

I do not pay any of the exorbitant charges being discussed here. My CAMO are honest and admit that there is little extra in the way of Part M that they should not be doing anyway.

There is no requirement for the CAMO to hold your log books.

Like I said, a lot of engineers have taken the opportunity to write there own interpretations of the rules and price accordingly. The cynical like myself would say that many are exploiting the situation.......

A&C you and I never going to agree on this, however don't think that I am stupid enough not to know the rules or have a lack of business knowledge to allow you to insult me into having the wool pulled over my eyes.

When we were talking to a number of potential CAMOs some took the line that if they were to be taking the responsibility for continued airworthiness, retaining the logbooks was part of the deal.

Again, it all comes down to the way the rules were interpreted.

And that was exactly the point I was making......
;)

robin

“And if they ever get round (as they have said they want to do) to requiring the microlight and Permit fleet to operate under Part M rules, they'll have a riot on their hands.”

Reference please!

Rod1

Robin. Sorry to say this, but you've been well and truly suckered.

Most of what you are complaining about is unnecessary. The maintenance firm we use, whilst fully approved, take a fairly cynical view of the whole CAMO bollocks and certainly in our case have chosen to completely ignore it, tick the extra boxes and carry on as normal.

The increased outlay is insignificant, given the overall cost of maintaining an aeroplane.

IIRC you were at the same meeting at Turweston where this was raised as an eventual aim.

There is ample paperwork to demonstrate that Annexe II is only a short-term measure. Gliders now fall under Part M, microlights were specifically mentioned and the LAA were discussing the possibility of becoming an approved organisation.

I've lost track of where things have gone since, though

Hang on, you can't do that. I mean, it has never been done before... I mean, it's not like the great majority of GA maintenance wasn't done that way as a default, was it??? :)

:ok::ok: