To say that managing maintenance events has become challenging in the last few years would be an understatement. It seems that a maintenance visit to any shop has a fair chance of being a disappointing experience.

What the heck is going on?

Retirements. New hires. Lower expectations from shop management based on who is out there to hire (nobody). Your best bet is to park yourself there from start until finish.

Some years ago a CFI that I used was not available for a Flight review in time for my needs. He told me he managed a PC-12 for a small group and was going to be out 10-14 days. The plane was going out of state for an annual inspection and he would be present for its entirety. That was back when things were "normal", so in today's environment it is probably a necessity to keep your airplane from sliding back in the schedule.

Supply and demand. Demand is significantly outstripping supply.

The maintenance ecosystem is a little like the highway system - you can add more traffic until it crosses a threshold where there is not quite enough spare space to maneuver and then everything just gets jammed up.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lOu8geh7mY0

I built this hangar, hired mechanics, and got my A&P because the writing was on the wall a few years ago. You cannot support/sell/own/operate quality machines without an intimate knowledge of maintenance. There are 15 parts airplanes behind the hangar, 2000 ft of air conditioned parts storage and 5 more shipping containers of parts.

I am focused on only being the world’s best in the legacy 500 series.

You have done well with the TarverJet or Tarver’s Gently Used CitationJets and your posts are always interesting. Thanks for sharing!

The thing I admire the most about what Mike is doing, is that he’s focused, he’s found a niche and is working it. I hope he is getting the level of care out of his mechanics we all expect, it seems to be a real challenge these days.

We are seeing overlooked items, scratches, dirty fingerprints, you name it.

This isn’t incompetence, this is, as my eloquent father would have said, a case where their giveash’t is broken.

Chip, you certainly deal with a lot more shops than I do so your sample set is much bigger than mine. But my experience with one turbine shop is that things haven't really changed much. Signature Technicair in Fresno still delivers consistently good service and quality. Are they perfect? No. Have I had issues there in the past? Yes. But overall I haven't noticed a drop off in quality in the last 3-4 years.

Consider yourself lucky. 4 of our last 5 prebuys have been problematic. A couple of them have been as bad as any experiences I’ve had in over 20 years in aviation.

I have had good luck with Mark / Jeff at Turboprop East KAQW North Adams Mass and Steve at Reliant KDXR Danbury CT. But both are very busy. Not cheap but I have had good luck with getting things fixed or installed right and not having to go back.

It's just too hard to staff with enough good mechanics. A large number of twin turboprops are getting beyond the age where most operators gave up on biz jets. You run into aging airplane problems well beyond lack of maintenance. This is well beyond basic part off new part on.

All fixable but it will take a good deep dive into the structure, systems and wiring. Start hoarding cores and research the parts manual for long out of production clamps, relays, fasteners, bearings, bushings etc. to locate.

What kind of problems? Just curious.

CJ2+ with blue water contamination under the floor, but the lead mechanic couldn't see it, another CJ2+ with greasy fingerprints all over it, paint touch up around windows was picked off by someone, airplane went in looking great, now we are taking it to a paint shop for touchup. Another airplane with scratches next to fasteners, looks like someone gave a 3 year old a screwdriver.

A King Air that was picked up from my clients first post closing maintenance event, I warned him to look for greasy fingerprints and make them clean it up. Well, he found the greasy fingerprints... between the cabin window panes.

It's disheartening.