FROM THE PUBLISHER
MANAGING EXPECTATIONS
I was recently reading some posts on a Facebook group that I’m a member of regarding aircraft ownership. One of the members of the group was complaining that he dropped his aircraft off for an avionics upgrade and was told that it should take 4 to 6 weeks to complete. But here he was, twelve weeks out with no solid date for when the job would be completed. He was furious and even considering legal action against the maintenance facility. For those of us who work regularly
on aircraft (especially vintage aircraft or aircraft that are used in a training environment) the idea that a maintenance event will go “smoothly” and will get done “on time” are concepts that are pretty rare. Most aircraft are a veritable can of
PUBLISHER
GREG NAPERT
gnapert@DOMmagazine.com
worms when any maintenance task is performed. For instance, even with my own aircraft, a simple task I performed recently (rotating the front tire for even wear) resulted in me observing that the wheel half bolts were slightly different in length after torqueing. Not being one to let something like that go, I pulled all the bolts to compare them and found one of the bolts had signs of necking which meant that it had somehow been over-torqued at some point. This wasn’t easy to catch at inspection since it was only the difference of a couple of threads showing. I wondered — how long had it been that way and since one had been over-torqued, and had they all been over-torqued? I decided to replace the bolts and it meant that instead of having the plane down for a couple of hours, it would now be down for a few days as I ordered and awaited new wheel bolts and related hardware! And that’s just the result of a simple
task. As many of you know, removing a complete avionics panel takes the unexpected to a whole new level!
You never know what you’re going to find, and what is anticipated to be a few weeks can easily turn into months of re-design, repair, field approvals, engineering modifications, etc. Even the most experienced shop cab be faced with these obstacles. Unfortunately and fortunately, from
the perspective of a maintenance department manager or DOM, there is often an intermediary between him or her and the customer. This person is often the service manager or salesperson.
And what do salespeople usually do to get a job in the first place? Exactly — they over-promise. And you, who are in charge of delivering a finished product on time, are left dealing with an irate and unhappy customer. Here’s where a little education can go a long way. It becomes incumbent on you (like it or not) to work with the salespeople and often with the customer to know what potentially could go wrong with any job. And if you are fortunate enough to be involved in the bidding for individual jobs, you need to take into account the complexity of the job, the age of the aircraft, the number of complex jobs that you are simultaneously working on and ADD time for those things that may be out of your direct control. Bottom line — always UNDER
PROMISE and OVER DELIVER. Unfortunately, you may not always
have a say in what the salespeople are promising, but you should never give up in providing feedback to the sales department if you are constantly being short changed on time and having to deal with angry aircraft owners. In the long run, it’s your reputation
that’s at stake! Thanks for reading.
Greg Napert, Proud to be an A&P
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DOMmagazine.com | june 2020
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