Mike Keeling, Avtrak’s operations manager in Denver, Colorado. Keeling oversees the staff of compliance specialists based in Avtrak’s Denver offices.
I
n today’s economy, service diversification is key to any maintenance organization’s survival and possible growth. But diversification is a two-edge sword. n the plus side, it allows you to offer more capabilities to more varying aircraft types. On the dark side, it means you have to do a lot more work to keep up with a wider variety of compliance and inspection issues. “If you have only one airplane you can probably do the research yourself by going on
FAA.gov,” explained Forrest Lynch,director of maintenance for Malone Air Charter and Sterling Flight Training. “But when you have multiple aircraft, with all their different accessories and equipment types, it can be very difficult and time consuming to try and keep up with it all.” Lynch, who is responsible for the diverse turbine and piston fleet said that one set of tools that they truly “couldn’t function without,” is the various electronic maintenance/record-keeping packages the company subscribes to. Malone/Sterling uses a combination of CesCom, Avtrak and TotalFBO to keep track of everything from life-limited components to ADs to inspections to spare parts inventory. Another benefit to the services Lynch mentioned is the ability to have a technical support professional available to answer questions technicians might have. “The services we get from the companies are expensive, but well worth it,” he said. “They save us a lot of time and improve our accuracy. They make our overall maintenance and compliance efforts a lot easier, which means our technicians can spend their time working on the airplanes, not researching inspection requirements.” By now, many of you are saying that you’ve seen or tried some computer-based tracking system and that they are more trouble (difficult) than they’re worth.
Aviation Maintenance |
avm-mag.com | April / May 2012 47
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64