CAREER DEVELOPMENT
These pros and cons aren’t all of the issues that a field mechanic deals with. Over all, it’s still a rewarding and satisfying position for a helicopter mechanic. I can’t overstate the importance of this job in the helicopter industry. I once had a doctor at my program tell me I was one of the most important people at this hospital. I doubted that, but I asked him why he thought that way. He said, “We have more than 2,000 employees here that include hundreds of administrative, operations and maintenance people, more than 500 nurses and aides, 45 doctors, eight flight nurses, 10 flight paramedics, four helicopter pilots and only one helicopter and one mechanic.” It made me feel good.
The Pros
The hangar mechanic. If you are the kind of mechanic who likes the routine of getting up in the morning, going to work for the day and then going home at night, then hangar maintenance is for you. If you enjoy working on a team with a group of mechanics and staying busy all day long, this is for you. This is about as close to a normal job as you can get in helicopter maintenance. I enjoyed the camaraderie of the hangar and working with all of my friends. I learned a lot from those guys and I learned to work on many different types of helicopters. We were always busy and we could go into more in-depth maintenance of the helicopters than I could out in the field. While we were still under pressure to get the aircraft back to the field, we didn’t have to make the snap decisions we did on contract. We had more time to do a better job and we always had a second set of eyes to ensure quality. If we had a problem with something, there was always other mechanics around who had probably experienced the issue before. I learned so much from these guys. After a while, when we were bringing in the same type
aircraft, the jobs became repeatable and we were able to hone our mechanical skills on something we had done before. Tracking and balancing main and tail rotors takes practice, and we got lots of practice in the hangar. The fact that we had all of the required tools and support equipment to do all of the work made it enjoyable. We also had the specialized shops such as avionics, engine, components and paint shops to support us. Along with the support of the parts department and the records department, we were able to focus on our maintenance projects. Speaking of projects, as a hangar lead mechanic, I enjoyed getting a project in for inspection and maintenance and completely disassembling, inspecting, repairing, reassembling, cleaning and painting, doing all of the ground runs and finishing all of the in-flight checks that were required and then seeing my aircraft fly away. It was done and gone, back to the hospital to do its job and I could move on to another project. Sometimes we would hear that the aircraft arrived and the crews loved it. That was nice, but I didn’t mind not hearing anything because that just meant they didn’t have any issues and it was back in service and doing what it was supposed to do. We don’t always hear when things are going
well but I guarantee that we would hear when they were going wrong. No news is good news. “Well that aircraft is gone, I think I’ll stop on the way home with the guys and have a beer to celebrate.” Yeah, I could do that — I wasn’t on call. Maybe I’d just go home and pick up the wife and kids and go out to dinner and a movie. I knew I wouldn’t be interrupted and need to leave early. It was nice to have a normal, structured work day. These are things the hangar mechanic can say that the field mechanic can’t. When it’s really busy you can work voluntary overtime.
Usually, at the end of a project while the aircraft is going back together and all of the ground runs and flight checks are being performed, you have the chance to work some overtime and make some extra money. This comes in handy when the project is done and you want to take a few extra days off or go on vacation. You can do this and not have to find a relief mechanic to cover for you. You can walk away from work and put things out of your mind. Things will still go on at work like normal. Go and relax. Unless you are working overtime, you are free evenings and
weekends. This gives you the opportunity to pursue hobbies, voluntary work, part-time work, church and charity work, family time and even further your education. It’s up to you and how much energy you have. Another thing that I enjoyed about working in the hangar
was the occasional road trip. Being single, I was usually sought after on short notice to travel out to the various cities where our contracts were located and provide the base mechanic vacation or training relief, assistance with inspections or any other technical assistance that was needed. It gave me the opportunity to go to places that I’d never been to with all of my expenses being paid. I usually picked up some extra overtime pay in the process. It also gave me the opportunity to see how the aircraft that we worked on in the hangar operated at their hospitals. That always gave me a lot of satisfaction and pride.
The Cons There are always down sides to any job and hangar work is no exception. Working in a Part 145 repair station can be demanding, even if only for the paperwork. Oh yeah, there is tons of it. A repair station must document every detail of a project on a work order so that the historical records will reflect the true history of the aircraft maintenance. Work orders are used for billing of labor, parts and outside services that must be paid for by a customer. This is a high-dollar business, and everything must be accounted for. Usually, when an aircraft comes into the hangar for maintenance, it’s because there are many inspections or repairs to do and the pressure to do all of this maintenance efficiently and economically can get intense. In the field, an aircraft is (hopefully) always flying and making money. When an aircraft comes into the hangar, it is not making money and it is costing the owner/operator a fortune. You will always find areas that need repairs when you tear into an aircraft for this heavy maintenance. You are the
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HelicopterMaintenanceMagazine.com October | November 2015
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