337's, 100-Hours & Annuals: The Paperwork Nobody Warned You About

Episode 3:
337's, 100-Hours & Annuals: The Paperwork Nobody Warned You About

Think aircraft ownership is all about flying?

Think again.

In this episode of Altitude Unfiltered, we dive headfirst into the world of maintenance paperwork, inspections, and FAA compliance. From mysterious Form 337s to confusing 100-hour inspections and annuals, we're breaking down the documents, regulations, and maintenance requirements that leave many aircraft owners scratching their heads.

We discuss:

• What a Form 337 is and when you need one
• The difference between a 100-hour inspection and an annual inspection
• Common paperwork mistakes owners make
• Why missing records can cost you thousands
• How mechanics and owners can work together to stay compliant
• Real-world stories from the maintenance hangar floor

Whether you're a new aircraft owner, a seasoned pilot, or an A&P mechanic who has spent countless hours chasing paperwork, this episode will help make sense of the maintenance maze.

Grab a cup of coffee, open the logbooks, and join us as we tackle one of aviation's least glamorous but most important topics.

Because sometimes the hardest part of aircraft ownership isn't flying the airplane... it's finding the paperwork.

🎙️ Altitude Unfiltered, Real Aviation. Real Conversations. No Filter.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Strap in, cause this isn't your typical aviation podcast. No scripts, no filters, no holding shorts. From the ramp to the cockpit, the stories they don't teach you in flight school. You're listening to Altitude Unfiltered.

SPEAKER_03 0:25

All right, welcome back to Altitude Unfiltered. My name is Kenny. I'm your host, joined by Joe, our co-host, and we have Carlos as well, who is also an AMP mechanic located over at Plant City, works for Atlas Aviation. Today we're going to be talking about uh not a fun subject that people enjoy is uh airplane maintenance. We're gonna be talking about the 337s, the 100 hours, and the annuals, and what it means to you as a pilot or even an owner-operator of an aircraft.

SPEAKER_04 0:52

Yeah, so what we're gonna be talking about today is what we can do to help you pilots, owner operators out there better understand what it means when your aircraft goes down for maintenance annuals, the stuff that we don't really like to do, but is absolutely necessary to keep your plane operating in a safe environment, which obviously with aviation, we want to be safe. And that's what we're gonna be talking about today.

SPEAKER_03 1:13

So Carlos, so when it when airplanes come into uh your shop or whatever, what's the first process that an owner operator should experience when they come into your shop with an airplane? Maybe it may not be broken, it may just be there for an annual annual.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Uh I I guess the first thing that you can do or expect to see is uh paperwork. Paperwork. Uh first off, uh an agreement. There has to be an agreement for maintenance in order for them to look at your plane as you know now.

SPEAKER_03 1:41

When an owner comes into maintenance and they show up with uh electronic logs, is that easier or harder for you guys? Seeing that the aircraft may be older. What if it's like a 1960s aircraft? It comes in half electronic, half paper logs. What is that to you guys as mechanics? Where does that leave them in a time frame? Is it harder or easier?

SPEAKER_02 2:03

I I like that I've worked with uh aircraft that have electronic logs when I was in the military, and I think that's the only place I've seen them so far because I'm working GA now. Now I've seen aircrafts older aircrafts, and they bring a stack. This is a big box that, as a when you're doing annuals, you have to go through all of that stuff. Not fun, but it's required. But honestly, I haven't had that experience other than that.

SPEAKER_04 2:32

Yeah, I mean, I think you know, we've been talking about like on the last podcast what EasyTrack Air is doing. I think it's a great thing. Like Carlos said, when customers bring an older aircraft in and they have a whole box of logs, you know, we're talking about AD research, we're talking about previous STCs done to the plane, all the hundred hours, all the annuals. It can be super overwhelming. So I think I do see a definite benefit to having electronic log entries, and just overall, just that it makes it more efficient for you as the owner operator to have that. In that regard, it's gonna be a smoother process. We all know shop rates are expensive. The less time your plane is in the shop, the less money you're gonna spend.

SPEAKER_03 3:11

If a owner comes in, you know, missing ADs and they flew the aircraft in, what is that to the owner? Is that a is that a huge problem, not a problem? Where did that where does that leave an owner? Because this happens in the real world. These uh owner operators, not all of them, but some of them get a little bit behind and they miss maybe an AD that came in the mail or um something like that. Where does that leave an owner when they first come into the shop?

SPEAKER_02 3:37

Well, the first thing you want to do is uh get them done. Yeah. Get them done.

SPEAKER_03 3:42

So those are mandatory. Yeah, an owner operator should expect that if they come in with ADs that are behind, they they are going to have to comply with those ADs before that aircraft will be released.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

I've seen a lot of uh a lot of ADs when they come out, they usually have a set date. So they will come out, they will arrive on the mail, but they'll they'll have a different date to comply them. You know, so not necessarily, you know, they might them the people might the AD might be out, but then the it's not the time for the AD yet.

SPEAKER_03 4:10

Right, it's a deferred AD. It takes they have a due date.

SPEAKER_04 4:14

Exactly. Correct, yeah. And I definitely would say if a plane comes in the shop and let's say they say, oh, well, we don't have our AD logs from you know 1978 to 1985, and there's an AD that came out during that time, and I don't have any evidence of compliance, unfortunately, we're gonna have to comply with that AD a second time, even if it was done previously. But as maintenance is done, paperwork is also done. And if there is no paperwork to back up the maintenance, in theory, it never even got done to begin with.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

Right, because there's no proof that it was ever done. Correct. Yep. That's why there's wars out there. Airplane without logs is it's not worth the money. Right.

SPEAKER_03 4:52

I always say an airplane without logs or messed up logs is not worth the payment that it sits on. Correct. And it's it's people need to understand that when it comes to airplanes, it's not like a vehicle, it's very much different. With the legality and the and the compliance that it needs to have. And that's where you know a professional management company comes in, they know what they're doing. It's worth the money in the end of the day because you're not going to mess something up and ruin your value of the aircraft. You agree? Oh, 100%, yeah. There's no doubt. All right, let's talk about some of the uh the legality paperwork of this. Let's go into like a 337. 337, what is that? What is a 337? How does that apply to an owner operator or anyone who owns an aircraft?

SPEAKER_04 5:30

Yeah, so a 337 is essentially just stating uh major repair or multi uh major repair or alteration, sorry. Um that is required anytime that is done. Now, what a major repair versus a minor repair is, is a whole other can of worms, and you can find that in the FARS. However, it is up to the mechanic doing the work to decide if it's major or minor. The major is what requires a 337. You have one copy, one copy gets sent to the FISDO as well, so that they have it on their record. Essentially, it's just a paper trail for the work to be done. It's an additional step for a major repair or a major alteration. Once again, all this boils down to paperwork. Everything we do has a paper trail. That's beneficial to you as the owner operator because now when you go to sell that airplane, you have the evidence of the work that was done, how it was maintained, who it was maintained by, dates, tack, cobs, everything. All this stuff is super critical for you as an owner operator so that you have a retention of the value of your aircraft.

SPEAKER_03 6:32

Have you ever seen a modification? Either one of you, have you ever seen a modification that clearly should have had a 337 and in the logs it shows nowhere that this was done?

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Yeah, we had we had some maintenance done on one of our aircraft, and the airplane came in. It was a leading edge repair. Leading edge repair stated on the far as it needs a 337. Um, now uh we had uh the mechanic was on the on the field that was on the field that they did the repair. He sent the airplane, that he sent the logs. The logs were um handwritten, so not not to our standards. And um, as a lead, I remember I got into the phone, sent him an email like, hey, number one, it's uh this is supposed to have a 337. And number two, I mean, can you do a little bit better? Some it's your AMP mechanic, you know, like we need a log, uh computer typed up and everything. Um, there we there was a go going back and forth about this whole situation, and then we ended up on an agreement. It's our aircraft, we want a 337 done. So as the IA did the IA did the 337, but he had a uh uh mechanic under him that did the work, that's how it works. The same mechanic that does the work cannot sign off the 337. So the mechanic did the work, he ended up signing up and then send it over. Whoever does the maintenance is the one that sends the 337 over to the FISDO within 48 hours.

SPEAKER_03 8:00

Okay, so that answers my next question of like who's responsible for this 337, the mechanic or the owner? Who's who's the owner?

SPEAKER_02 8:07

The only thing the owner owner will need is a copy for his logs.

SPEAKER_03 8:11

Right. The owner just puts it in his logbook. That's that's what he has to do.

SPEAKER_02 8:15

Yeah, it's yeah, exactly. It's not it's not uh the owner's responsibility to send it to the fizz though.

SPEAKER_03 8:20

So do people intentionally avoid doing 337s because it may hinder the value of their aircraft, like trying to sh trying to hide maintenance, trying to hide that there may have been a hard landing that crumpled a firewall or anything like that. Have you ever seen that before?

SPEAKER_04 8:37

I think it depends on what the work was that was done. Obviously, if you're doing an alteration that adds benefits to your aircraft, then people aren't gonna hide that because it makes their aircraft obviously have a higher value when you go to resell. There's definitely, I will say, I'm not so sure about um, you know, on the owner side, but mechanic side, like I said, it's up to the mechanic to decide if it's major or minor. A major does not just include the 337. You also need an IA. There's a lot more to it than just a standard repair. So I have seen before where mechanics themselves, as Carlos just said, are saying, oh, well, you know, I don't consider this a major repair. And it really is based off the FARS.

SPEAKER_03 9:17

Like they're doing a wing rib or you know, having to unrivet something and rivet it back together like something serious. Correct.

SPEAKER_04 9:24

And essentially what constitutes a major repair or a major alteration per the FARS is changing away from the TCDS of the aircraft. So essentially, if I take a wing, for example, this is a great example. We had to do this recently, we had to remove a wing off our 182 to replace um uh it's pretty much just like a little connector for a fuel line. That's a big job. The wing comes off, all the flight control cables are ripped out, fuel lines are taken out, everything. But since it didn't change the actual TCDS of the aircraft, and we didn't do any super heavy modification or repair, just pretty much putting a new um patch on where the old one was, that doesn't constitute a major. So it's very, it's very uh easy to get lost in translation with what is and isn't a major repair. Right. I can understand that.

SPEAKER_03 10:17

That's there's probably a little bit of a gray area there, and some mechanics are gonna be a little more of the air of caution than others.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

Um all my time when I was doing commercial, uh we had a ear coop. The ear coop came in, we had problems with the brakes, the the the we couldn't find the brakes, uh, the brake master cylinder, and we ended up buying an STC. What STC is you're altering the original design of the airplane, and then after the maintenance was done, a 337 had to be produced, uh, IA had to sign, and it had to be mailed over to the to the proper channels.

SPEAKER_03 10:50

Right. And that's how it should be. It shouldn't be documented so someone who buys the aircraft later on understands and knows that something did happen or something was altered or or uh taken care of. What's one of the sketchiest undocumented repairs or modifications that you guys have seen in your career?

SPEAKER_04 11:09

There's been a handful, don't hold back for sure. There's been a handful. Um, and not even on the documentation, I mean, sure, on the documentation side as well. Um, we've had issues in the past with you know, people that we have worked with, unfortunately, where um we do we do an STC and we see uh at the time I was an A and P, I was not an IA yet. Or actually, I think I had just gotten my IA. Correct. Yeah, I just got my IA. And um my boss at that time told me to deviate from what the STC said to do. Now, the thing with an STC is you cannot deviate off it. It has to be, you can't STC the STC. Now that's because it's tested per that STC career. How it's documented. That's it, that's how it's tested. Correct. So it wasn't necessarily a documentation error, but he wanted me to deviate from what it said. And this is a great example of why, as an owner operator, you need to trust the maintenance you're going to. Go get food, have a beer with these guys, get to know them, make sure they are good people, that they stand on their business, that integrity is their first personality trait and should be the one you mainly look for. In this scenario, you know, we're taught when we go to school that no matter what somebody says, if it's wrong, it doesn't matter if they're the boss's boss, you do it right, even if it means losing your job. Um, in this instance, you know, eventually I convinced my boss at the time after much argumentation and uh not fun conversation that we had to do it correctly. And we did. Um, however, in that process, he noticed that the past six airplanes that he had done this STC on, he did not do it properly. Um, and that was a huge deal for us. So we had to go back through and fix all those mistakes he had made. Had somebody not caught that, we would have had essentially six airplanes flying around illegally.

SPEAKER_03 12:51

Yeah, that could be a big liability on your part. Yeah. Because he didn't follow the SCT to what the paperwork says. But that's what you're putting in the logbook.

SPEAKER_04 12:59

So I mean that's gospel. And this this STC, if this was not done in the fashion that was supposed to be done, what essentially could happen is the rudder cable could kind of rub against this rivet and eventually fray your rudder cable out and you'd lose your rudder. So they'd have no yaw control, which is correct. So this was a big deal. This wasn't something small like a placard. This was something where if this is not addressed and done properly, it could result in a fatal crash. Yeah. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 13:25

Let's move on to other inspections, right? So we have a bunch of other inspections, but 100-hour inspection. There's also a 50-hour inspection, am I correct? Yeah, yeah. 50-hour oil change, yeah. Yeah, and like for if it's for hire or anything like that. Yes. So let's talk about the 100-hour inspections. Let's let's explain what those are. Most every aircraft owner has to do them, correct? Uh only if they're for hire. Right.

SPEAKER_02 13:49

Only for the higher. Only for the higher, yes. Every 100 hours of flight of the airplane, the airplane has to come in to check or do preventive maintenance, uh, maintenance, anything that has to do with in you know, making sure the airworthiness of the airplane. Right.

SPEAKER_03 14:02

And the only reason I bring that up is because you guys both work for a flight school. So you guys get to do the hundred hours all the time. Now, what does the hundred hour entail? How does that differ from an annual? How does that differ from just a 50-hour oil change?

SPEAKER_02 14:13

Uh the annual and the 100 hours, they're exactly the same checklist. The only the only thing that changes is the wording on the sign-off. That is one is an annual inspection, the other one is a hundred-hour inspection. That's pretty much the difference.

SPEAKER_03 14:25

Now, if someone come in and argue with you that, hey, you did my hundred hour, why can't you just sign that off as an annual? What does the FAA have to say about that? Why do they say no, it's not the same, even though in reality it's the same inspection?

SPEAKER_04 14:37

So it just it's just who signing it off, honestly. I mean, if you're if you're an IAA and and a customer comes in and he says, Hey, you're doing this inspection, I just want to make it an annual, we can absolutely do that. Um, like I said though, with it with it being the flight school for higher stuff, we usually plan it out to keep our annual spread. But there's multiple times where I've brought a plane in for 100 hour and said, you know what, I'm gonna do this one as an annual. And I will say at the annuals for us, I do go a little bit more in depth, especially with like AD research and things of that nature. Just because it is a flight school environment, we see these planes very frequently. Any given day of the week, we generally have a plane in for inspection. So we are seeing the planes a lot, and it's easy to get kind of um used to it or familiar with it to where you're not really catching things you should be. So that's what I do with our annuals, and Carlos says the same, where we kind of take the annual to just really take our time and look extra deep into every little thing. But it is the same exact inspection as a hundred hour, and that's totally something that owner operators can do is if it's an IA performing that inspection, say, hey, I want this one to be an annual. And they can go ahead and do that.

SPEAKER_03 15:45

Absolutely. Now, how does that affect their there's a rule where you can overfly by 10 hours, right? The plus 10 rule. Now, how does that how does that apply to the 100 hour versus the annual? Do they both have the 10 hour rule or do they not?

SPEAKER_04 15:58

So I'll tell you, I'm I'm not too sure on that, but I'll tell you what I would recommend is to not do that. The reason being is those timelines are there for a reason. Um, the FAA isn't just like, oh, 100 hours, I like the number 100, 100 bucks are great. Let's do 100 hour inspections. They set those timelines in place because they know that that is sort of a critical fatigue area. And when a plane, especially one in an environment that maybe doesn't fly a whole lot, there is a lot of things that can happen within 100 hours. I mean, we could be talking for a customer that maybe flies this plane once a week. That hundred hours is months. That could be years, could be years, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 16:36

My 250. I fly 250 on our on the aircraft that I fly daily. It's uh and 250 hours a year really is not that much flying.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

I remember doing annuals when I did commercials with uh owners that have flown the airplane 12 hours on a year in a year, yeah. On a year, yeah, yep.

SPEAKER_03 16:52

Now, now would you see people uh and you've been in different types of maintenance environments? Have you seen people abuse this 10 hour rule? Have you seen them overfly that and keep abusing it?

SPEAKER_02 17:02

It's it's something that I don't I don't think you can overfly just because it has to be a specific reason of why you fly. I believe it's going to a specific main shop close by. I believe it has to be a certain amount of distance from where the aircraft is based out, so it's not something.

SPEAKER_03 17:19

Right, it's a good that's a really good point you brought up. You can't just overfly your inspections by the 10 hours just to because you needed to fit a flight in. It's to only get it to or to a maintenance terrorist equipment.

SPEAKER_04 17:33

Yeah, correct. And if if you want to be extra safe about this, and you can even call your FISDO, the FISDO guys, especially here at Tampa FISDO, are great. You can also do an SFP, a special ferry permit. Those are in place for this exact reason of let's say you maybe accidentally overflew by five hours, ten hours, fifteen hours even. You can file for an SFP, which is essentially just a one-time flight, and it's just gonna allow you to fly. You have to file, you know, hey, I'm going from TPF to Plant City, and you file that with the FIS though, and that's how you would be extra safe as an owner operator, just so there's no penalty involved. Um, luckily for us, we run a very tight schedule with our spreadsheets, flight schedule pro. Um, fingers crossed, I've yet to overfly any of our plans for annual 100 hour anything like that.

SPEAKER_03 18:18

And if you're not flying a whole lot in a year, you shouldn't overfly it. You never should. And if you are, then uh kind of shame on you at that point, right?

SPEAKER_04 18:26

Yeah, no doubt. And I would definitely for everybody out there that does fly, owner operators, et cetera, um keep track of this stuff because it's such a simple thing to do to just track your hours and know where you stand. And numbers play a big part in your value of the aircraft, especially when we get into overhaul. We're talking about engine time, prop time, total time on the airframe. This stuff is highly important, not only for compliance, but also for when you go to sell your aircraft, you're able to give a concise number of what you've done with it, how long you've had it, and what you know, how many hours you've actually put on it.

SPEAKER_03 19:00

And that brings me up to a good point. Like Easy Tracker Air is a great program to be able to do that. It's $99 a year for the owner operator. You plug your stuff and you can go all the way down to adding a quart of oil, it'll tell you how much oil you've been consuming over the month. I mean, it's a great program.

SPEAKER_04 19:15

Yeah, no, I agree. And I think I think that program specifically is great, especially for the owner operator, because generally speaking, it's maintenance facilities that are tracking those things, and that doesn't always get relayed to the owner operator. So having a program like EasyTrag Air, you're able to see that on the owner side, and it helps you to be able to communicate with your maintenance department.

SPEAKER_03 19:36

Now, have you ever seen a hundred-hour come in and start as a hundred-hour inspection and then turn into a full three-month oh man, this is gotten really bad. You have to make that phone call to the owner. Hey, buddy, you got a minute? Do you want to sit down? This this one might hurt.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we've I've seen that. I've seen that before. Um, so currently we're having a we we had an we have an airplane in the hangar. It's not that bad, all right? It's not that bad. But is it not that bad mechanic-wise? Or no, well, so a the airplane came in for a 50 hour for a 50 hour. Yeah. Uh from a 50 hour turn into a fuel pump replacement. And from a fuel pump replacement, um, we were, I guess we uh what were we past overall? Yeah, so we were a little bit past, yeah. So with the engine was ready, but a month or a month ago or a couple weeks ago, we actually had finished an annual on the airplane. So funny, funny thing. We came in for the 50, turned into fuel pump from a fuel pump, it turned into an engine change.

SPEAKER_04 20:38

Yeah, so a one uh uh not even a five-hour, 50 hour, possibly even less. Uh, the aircraft will now be down for about a month to swap out this engine. So that is how quick it can go from this is great to uh why do I fly airplanes?

SPEAKER_03 20:53

So let's let's talk a little bit about that because you know people defer maintenance all the time. They sit there and go, okay, well, not today. It's almost like when they get their oil changed, they're like, No, I don't want my tires rotated today. I don't want my brakes done today. So in airplane world, you can also do this, you can defer certain maintenance, right? Correct. Um, unfortunately, what happens when owners go, no, not today, not today, not today. They get to their hundred hour, and what does that look like for an owner when they get there and now all of a sudden they have not today's all sitting in front of them?

SPEAKER_02 21:22

Well, you just said it right there. So uh inspections, we we we run squawks sheets and we run work orders and all that stuff, right? So we have a sheet that kind of like we that the the first stuff, right? We the first stuff, and over time that little blue sheet becomes one thing, two things, three things, four. So the annual comes in or the honor comes in, and these inspections are three, four, four pages, five pages long, you know, and you you got from a page that's supposed supposed to be the front page twenty squawks, you have thirty, thirty, forty squawks that you should have been taking. Taking care of it as you find them because that avoids uh you blowing up your wallet pretty much.

SPEAKER_04 22:06

Yeah, no doubt. I mean, routinely on our inspections, we have I would say 40 different squawks that we go through. Now keep in mind, we're both IAs, me and Carlos are both very meticulous. So this isn't, you know, all airworthy items. I'd say most of these items are something like a wire standoff needs to get some glue on it and put back on there. But these little things, you see them at a hundred hour. And when you have the pressure from uh either the flight school or an owner operator saying, Hey, I gotta go, I gotta go, we'll say, Hey, we can't do this right now. So, what I would encourage owner operators, and look, y'all can hate me if you want, you know where to find me. But I think you've already made people mad this week with your uh Instagram post. I know, I'm already there, I'm already there. So we're just gonna keep it going. But when a shop tells you that they need more time to get this stuff done, please allow them to get it done because that is exactly how it's gonna save you money in the long run. And that is your safety. Yes, that is your safety 100%. So it's and another thing to keep in mind, this is mainly for part 91 guys. Obviously, if you're on, you know, a charter operation, you're gonna have an MEL and that's a whole different can of worms. Oh, yeah. But for your part 91 stuff, yeah. And and I know there's owners out there who, when the mechanic goes to them and says these issues, they say, well, do what's do what the airworthy items are. And that's great. But I'll tell you what, those small items can very quickly turn into unairworthy items. That's what we can get into with the preventative maintenance side of things. Allow the shop to do the things to make that aircraft as beautiful as it was when you first purchased it.

SPEAKER_03 23:39

Right. Because at the end of the day, you're you're taking off the ground in this thing, you're going flying. No, no, no. And driving down the interstate, you can't just pull over.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

So if it's something little that turns into something big, not only that, when you when you're about to sell the airplane, you want the airplane to be pristine, then you're gonna have the the new owner trying to do a pre-buy on it, and then they find all these stuff that you didn't take care of over time, and then you know that that bill is gonna be more expensive. He might look at the airplane, oh, you have 30 squawks to fix, and I don't want to buy on that, you know?

SPEAKER_03 24:08

Yeah, I mean, deals fall through all the time. If you've been anywhere around any kind of brokers or uh any aircraft sales guys, they'll tell you, I mean, they fall through all the time because of poor maintenance or you know, not finding corrosion when they should have found it and things like that. Now, annual inspections. Annual inspections, mandatory inspection has to be done or the aircraft's not airworthy. I know of several aircraft that are sitting on the ground right now out of annual, and the only thing I can think of is a lot of times it's the owners don't have the money to complete the annual because they did this with the maintenance where they step back and said, Not today, not today, not today. That squawk, that 30 item long squawk list came out, and they're like, I guess we're not flying it anymore, and they just let it sit and rot. And that's the majority of most of these abandoned airplanes. Yep. Yes. Um what should an owner expect for an annual time frame wise on a good clean annual with no pop-up surprises?

SPEAKER_02 25:00

I would say between um a week, I think, I think would be uh decent. Yeah, time frame. I'd agree about a week.

SPEAKER_03 25:06

Uh on your general GA aircraft, your Cessna's, your Moonies, your uh bonanza, stuff like that, right?

unknown 25:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:14

We're not talking jets or like my Pilates or anything like that, because I know those take about two weeks and get in, there's stage checks and all kinds of other things.

SPEAKER_04 25:21

Yeah, we generally like to do five days, is what we set our schedule with. Now, like we were just discussing, that five days very often turns into 14 days, depending on what we find. Um, and that's simply just the cost of ownership and aviation. But yeah, generally we like to do five days. Uh, 100 hours for us are about three days. The reason it's a little bit longer is like I said, me and Carlos, we go a little bit more in depth. We look at every AD, not just recurring ADs. Um, we just kind of look at it with an extra, extra microscope than what you would on a normal inspection.

SPEAKER_03 25:51

So if it takes if an owner hasn't heard from you, and how many days should they start getting nervous?

SPEAKER_04 25:56

I would say five, five. Yeah. And that's, you know, the way I look at it is five days. That gives us three days to the for the actual inspection, and it gives us a day to fix what we find. And then that fifth day is generally when we do all our paperwork. We do our post-engine run, um, we clean the aircraft, so we wipe the aircraft down, make it look nice and shiny and pretty. So that's why we give it the five-day rule. Um, but like I said, that can be uh strung out even farther. What I would say uh for for anybody out there that has a plane in maintenance, if you don't hear from five days, give them a call. And most of these shops around here, they're not gonna be like, you know, why the heck are you calling me? I need more time. They're gonna be pretty open to explaining and showing you things.

SPEAKER_03 26:36

Uh on day five, when they answer the phone and they say, Hey, do you have a minute and sit down? Should they be concerned? Yes. Like leak.

SPEAKER_04 26:44

The wording you use when you call people. Oh, yeah, no. My my favorite thing for us with the flight school is we have our CSRs at the front desk, and uh, when they see me walk up there, they all run and hide because they know I'm bringing bad news.

SPEAKER_03 26:54

They don't want the bad news of, hey, this airplane's gonna be down a while. You might want to start moving students around. Yep, 100%. When does a recommendation from you guys turn into a requirement? When does an owner go, okay, I can no longer say this is being deferred? Is that up to the mechanic to go, hey, this isn't airworthy anymore? We can't let this slide anymore. This is more the director's man, the director's job at that point.

SPEAKER_04 27:16

Yeah, I mean, for the most part, what I do is, you know, for us, it's it's different depending on the operation you're running. For us, Atlas Aviation, we pride ourselves down to the resty rivet. That's how we roll. Um, so when I find something that I'm like, hey, I want more time with it, generally speaking, I will make the time to get it done. Now, if it's a customer's aircraft, you know, the the the crappy reality of it is I can't do work that I'm not authorized to do. And the authorization comes from the owner. So I can go to the owner and there there's two outcomes to this. If it's an airworthy item, what I can do is I can sign that aircraft as unairworthy, he's still gonna have to pay the bill. Or I can sign it off as airworthy and I get the work done that needs to get done, and he still has to pay the bill. So at the end of the day, you still are paying for the maintenance, and that's why I say it's important to build a good relationship, but it's also important to let the mechanic do their job. Let them take their time, let them fix what needs to be fixed because regardless, you're having to pay the bill, and it's better to pay and be able to fly than pay and just have an unearworthy airplane.

SPEAKER_02 28:16

Right. Just have a payment uh I've seen Rolfi. I've seen other mechanics and all other mechanics that have the IA, and they were like, Yeah, well, uh, they do the inspection, the uh owner got shitty, they don't want to get the mainness done. Okay, well, it's sign off as a list and they give you a list of discrepancies. The aircraft on airworthy, they don't want to touch your airplane anymore, and you're that's the only main shop on the field. Now, what what are you gonna do?

SPEAKER_03 28:38

Right, you can't fly in a mechanic.

SPEAKER_02 28:39

I mean, yes, you could fly in a AOG mechanic, but yeah, and then how much is that gonna cost you now? Exactly. Like mileage, you're paying mileage for Diem, you know, whatever the guys there for the inspection.

SPEAKER_04 28:50

Yeah, no, and I would definitely say that I do look at things from an airworthiness standpoint. Of course, I go a little bit extra just because we like to maintain our fleet in the way that we do. But always when we have a rush, we have a lot of customers that are reoccurring renters. We work for the aerial photography company, actually, that rents our aircraft. This even happened today where we were getting some, I scheduled a hundred hour for next week. We have an awesome uh detailer that works for us. He does all our paint work, composite work. He's freaking awesome. He was like, Man, I really want to, you know, paint these wings. I need to get them touched up. I had I had uh not screwed over, it's a bad word, but this aerial photography company had already canceled them a few flights because of the hundred hour. And that's one of those things where I said, Hey, I I love these guys, they give us great, you know, work. Obviously, they rent the aircraft often. We're gonna defer that till the next hundred hours that way they can still fly. So there are certain things that are more cosmetic in nature that I would say, yep, we're gonna wait and defer that because it's not necessarily an airworthiness item. But even when we defer things, we don't just defer it and say, No, all right, well, we'll do that someday. We have a spreadsheet that we go in there and we type in, hey, next hundred hour, we're doing X, Y, and Z.

SPEAKER_03 30:01

So when you go in and print it off, you have you have your you know, work order that has that on it, and you're like, Oh, we have to take care of this today. Correct.

SPEAKER_04 30:08

Yeah, and we use work orders like crazy. I mean, that's literally our Pratt and Joy.

SPEAKER_03 30:12

So and that's that's a good point because if you go to a shop that's not using work orders, or you know, you got Billy Bob in the corner writing it down on a yellow legal pad. You need to run out of the Yeah, you need to go find a new shop because he may be the best mechanic around, um, but your records are gonna be garbage. Most likely not organized, yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about uh have you guys ever in your career found mystery damage? I know you work for a flight school. Mystery damage is probably a story where you found some mystery damage on an airplane.

SPEAKER_04 30:40

Oh, yeah. I mean, like you were talking about with uh the wing that had uh the leading edge. There was so many there's stories floating around of how that came to be. Um and then we have one of the STCs we've done for the fleet is the tail skid. So we put essentially this beefed up tail skid that looks very archaic and cool on uh all our 172s.

SPEAKER_03 31:02

Well, I mean, as a as a flight instructor, when I'm teaching soft field takeoffs, a lot of times you get that where students don't understand that um to release the back pressure a little bit to keep it in a nice balanced nose-up attitude and they end up cracking the tail on the ground. So I understand where you oh yeah would install that in a flight school.

SPEAKER_04 31:21

No, we found them bent a few times and we're like, you know, not necessarily mysterious, but we know what happened, even though they didn't say anything. Like, yeah, we're not gonna report this one.

SPEAKER_03 31:29

I don't think it damaged. So are annuals normally expensive, or are the owners just behind in maintenance? Because that's everybody goes into an annual going, oh man, I gotta pay all this money for an annual, I gotta pay all this money for an annual. Is it really the annual that's expensive, or is it the maintenance that they didn't do?

SPEAKER_02 31:47

I think the inspection per se is not that expensive. It shouldn't be.

SPEAKER_04 31:51

Yeah, no, the inspection, and of course, depends on the shop you go to. Yeah, but generally speaking, um, aviation shop rates aren't that much higher than the automotive shop rates. And that's a huge thing that everybody's oh, the shop rates. You're you're paying for the discrepancies found more than the inspection, nine times out of ten. Um I would say when owner operators are doing those deferred items and they're getting them taken care of throughout the year, it's gonna be a better looking bill than if you just go all in once a year and you say do the whole nine yards. It's gonna be a pretty big bill, one hundred percent.

SPEAKER_03 32:29

Right. What does a clean aircraft look like, you guys? If an airplane comes in and it goes into annual and comes right out, what's a clean aircraft? Uh looks like a fever dream that I've never had. Yeah, you never had never had one of those come in. No, nope, nope, nope. Never had a four-day annual come in, go right out, everything's been taken care of, looks good.

SPEAKER_04 32:46

We uh we have a rule that um you know, me and Carlos expressed to our our junior technicians that if they do an inspection and they can't find anything wrong, they did not inspect the airplane. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 32:56

Yeah, I could agree with that. There's always gonna be something. If you're not looking, you're not gonna find any.

SPEAKER_04 33:01

Yeah. That's right. So yeah, I've I've I can honestly say every and even on the cleanest of airplanes. I mean, he got Carlos got brand new airplanes, uh, brand new R V twelves. You know, they flew in. They had what, five hours? No, more than that. Oh, thirty thirty five thirty-five hours. They flew from Oregon. Oregon over here. Yep. And when he got those airplanes, you better believe it, he found some stuff wrong with it on a brand new plane. So the mentality of, oh, well, it passed annual last year, it's gonna pass this year.

SPEAKER_03 33:27

Is that a thing? Absolutely. Have you ever heard owners say that?

SPEAKER_04 33:30

Oh, yeah. Yeah, and that's and you know, something to remember too is um this plane flies in the air. This is not a car, you cannot pull over on the side of the road. And I know I sound like a broken record saying that, but genuinely speaking, the reason these inspections exist is for your own safety. So when you hear people saying, Oh, I'm I'm not gonna do the annual or I'm not gonna do the hundred-hour, which would be crazy, but I'm sure there are people out there that do, you are putting your family's lives at risk. These inspections exist for a reason. It is to keep you safe, and I know it does cost money. Aviation is not cheap, but there are ways to make it more affordable. And I truly believe, you know, the push with preventative maintenance and pilot main or owner-operator maintenance, which I yes ranted about the other day, but I think it's a great outlet.

SPEAKER_03 34:16

But you ranted about it, but you made a good point. Yes, you can change your own tire, you can change your own spark plugs. I mean, some people can change spark plugs, not all people. Um but um you want to be shown how to do it. Yeah, like I explained to you, I have professional training in automotive mechanics. I was a NASCAR mechanic, and I still would not do some stuff on an airplane, even though I'm mechanically inclined, I'd still want to be shown how to do it the right way before I went and tried to do it and then just said, Yeah, I did it myself, it's all good.

SPEAKER_04 34:47

Correct. And even just to touch on that a little bit, for you know, it's it is very true. If you have what I would recommend is if you want to do your own maintenance on your aircraft that is considered preventative maintenance by the FAA, 23 items correct, correct. What I would do is have an AP come out and show you how to do those items before you do them yourself. One thing I didn't talk about in that video that I also want to make clear is there is this new wave of these things called owner-assisted annuals that does not exist. If you are not an IA, you cannot do that annual. Um, even an ANP without an IA cannot do that annual. And if you are just a pilot, you cannot do that annual. Now, what I will say is if you would like to supervise the annual to learn more about your aircraft, to learn how to do the things that the ANPs are doing, you can absolutely supervise it. But if you go to a shop and they say, Hey, I I do owner-assisted annuals, the community needs to know that that is not legal per the FARS, and that is very sketchy territory.

SPEAKER_03 35:55

Right. You don't want to go down that road with the FAA if something does come up later, you know, you had an incident where you end up off a runway and they're like, Oh, you did an owner-assisted annual, where's your IA signature? You know.

SPEAKER_04 36:05

Exactly. Yep. And it's, you know, even down, I know there's a lot of people out there that say, Oh, well, I just open and close panels. Unfortunately, if it is an annual inspection, that is a part of the annual inspection checklist, and you are doing maintenance without proper certification.

SPEAKER_02 36:20

No, no, I've I've seen I've heard, and even when we do commercial, I wasn't an IA at that time, but we had this these people. Well, we we want to help out, we want to just open panels for you guys. But you know, some some some of these some of the owners actually they'll they go open panels, and then when the inspection is done, that the AMP does everything, they close the panels and everything. Well, I'll hell I'll help you. Uh like so how much are you gonna knock off that annual?

SPEAKER_03 36:48

Right, and I think that's why they do it, is because they're trying to save the money on the annual, but and that goes back to our original statement of well, is the annual expensive, or is the maintenance that you deferred all year expensive and you're now trying to to save that money?

SPEAKER_04 37:02

Correct, exactly. Yeah, and the annual, like we were saying, can only be done by an IA. Um, the schooling that we went through for the IA, the testing, it is rigorous, it's not easy. Yeah, um, you you are watched. Nine tests, nine tests, correct, yeah, in total, as in the IA. Plus the IA, yep, yep.

SPEAKER_03 37:19

So the myth of my mechanic will catch everything. I'm sure you guys heard that. My mechanic's great. You'll find anything that's wrong with this airplane.

SPEAKER_02 37:26

He's he's human. Yeah, he's human.

SPEAKER_03 37:29

Right, because a lot of people don't think understand that when you do these inspections, you're up in the wings with a mirror, looking at stuff with a mirror. Yep. I mean, it's have you ever drove down the road, looked in your side view mirror, you don't see everything. I mean, people miss cars and they, you know, change lanes.

SPEAKER_02 37:44

That's why you have procedures to follow. That's why you have uh a checklist to follow, and then every every item on the airplane has uh uh an inspection criteria on the manual that you just go straight to the manual, inspection criteria, and then you inspect and look for what the checkpoints tell you to correct.

SPEAKER_03 38:01

Right, and you do it step by step by step per that manual.

SPEAKER_02 38:04

Yeah, avoid avoiding human errors that that's one of the issues. Well, one of the dirty dozen from the FAA. Yeah. Uh yeah, procedure is there for a reason. Just follow the procedure and the inspection checklist.

SPEAKER_03 38:16

And if someone's you know doing a pre-buy on an airplane and oh, the logs look super squeaky clean, is the aircraft clean too?

SPEAKER_04 38:22

If the logs look clean, not necessarily, and not even, you know, to say with uh human factors and all that as well. Something that I'm very grateful for Carlos for is me and him both and and pretty much all of our team members, all of our mechanics, we're constantly checking each other to eliminate that human error factor. So when I do an annual, if Carlos is there, I'll actually have Carlos as an IA come behind me and check what I just inspected to see if he sees anything that I might have missed. So there's things that you can do in the shop to make sure you're kind of eliminate that you can't eliminate human error, but you can engineer it out is a saying that goes around and all you can you can plan that culture in the shop to have this X'd out from the formula pretty much.

SPEAKER_03 39:08

No, and I agree with that a hundred percent because both of you guys, you know, you check each other, which is great. There should always be a second check. You know, even though I change or I put oil in my in the Pilates all the time, I have to top it off or whatever. There's a procedure of taking that dipstick out, and it's very expensive. But there's a procedure of taking it out, putting it back in, you gotta put a connector back on it. Well, I trust myself because everything lines up in locks, but I will still go get another person, pilot, even a mechanic that's walking around because we sit right next to a mechanic shop. I'll say, Hey, you got a second, come look at this, make sure I put that back in.

unknown 39:40

Right?

SPEAKER_03 39:40

And they'll check it, you know, all the green line up, the connectors in, you're good to go. That's just a dipstick, you know?

SPEAKER_04 39:45

Yeah, no doubt. And that's that's why I do recommend hanging out as an owner for your annuals. I I so recommend it. I know, like I said, you cannot help assist or perform the annual, but when you hang out and you watch your mechanic, you are still a second set of eyes. You know, as we say, the pilot is, in my opinion, the last mechanic because he's the last one on that pre-flight inspecting everything to make sure it is good to go. So it's important the more you know on a pilot side, the safer you are when you fly.

SPEAKER_03 40:13

I think that's why you do your Instagrams, the more you know with maintenance Joe. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it the stuff you tell these people they probably never heard of before. Yeah, and that's even just in their mag checks and stuff, that's stuff you haven't done since private pilot.

SPEAKER_04 40:26

Correct. And that's that was kind of the idea that me and Autumn had was making content that essentially is informing pilots of stuff that they might not be familiar with fully or stuff that they might not know at all that's gonna help them fly safer and be more confident when they fly. If you understand how something works and not just why it works, it helps you to be more confident in what you are doing.

SPEAKER_03 40:49

Now, what's some advice we can give to our owner operators that are listening to this podcast? What's some advice maintenance-wise that we can give them to make their annuals a whole lot more streamlined, their hundred hours go smoothly, whatever it is that they do maintenance-wise, to not be scary and not be like, oh, here comes another event that we're gonna have to pay, you know, thousands of dollars for. What's some of the stuff we can get for them?

SPEAKER_04 41:11

What's um there's a couple things definitely. The first thing I'd say is paperwork, you know, logs are so critical to what we do. If you come to me with a dirty, crusty log book, I'm going to be a dirty, crusty mechanic. And um, that's that's the biggest thing that I would definitely recommend is look at your logs, find ways like EasyTrack Air to make it more readable, to make it easier to flow through. I would also say, like we discussed with the deferred items, be prepared to go into annual and spend money on those small items. And then also look out for preventative maintenance. One big thing that I see that destroys aircraft here in Florida is corrosion. So these are things that if you address them now, not only is your annual gonna come out quicker. Get them as they appear. Get them as they appear, and you're gonna be able to get your plane done at a cheaper cost. It's a larger upfront cost, but when you look at your annual expenses, it's cheaper. I mean, a great example is TBO, right? If you're running past TBO and your engine is just literally burning oil like crazy, in the end you're probably gonna spend more money than if you just go in, get that fresh overhaul. You've got the safety, you've got a running engine that's much more efficient, and you're saving money on oil. So these things that are considered preventative or recommended maintenance, not only is there the safety aspect of it, but it will save you money in the long run.

SPEAKER_03 42:38

Now I like that you brought up the corrosion thing here in Florida. Um, I know we we talk, we have listeners all over the US, but in Florida, the salinity is outrageous. You can go fly these airplanes, they do one training flight, come back, and you can probably get enough salt off the prop to make yourself dinner. It's it's not even a joke. Um but people don't understand what that does to an aluminum aircraft. Because there are parts of this aircraft that aren't covered in an anti-corrosion paint. I mean there shouldn't be, but you know, if they do a repair or something and someone didn't coat the back of the the panel before they put it back on, I mean that's always a possibility. Um how important is it to have a good maybe just a detailer or a I wouldn't say detailer, but someone who just washes your airplane every month. How will that save them a lot of money in the long run?

SPEAKER_02 43:27

Or yeah, you want you want that that sold out of there that way you can keep the the structure uh safe and and good free for us?

SPEAKER_03 43:36

I I've seen I've seen um just recently on Instagram I was kind of scrolling through and this guy said, you know, I did a pre-buy, I did a whole bunch of stuff, and I think it was a mechanic shop that you know wrote everything down on a yellow legal pad and said, Yeah, no, you're good. We'll take we'll take your money. And both of the inter wing routes on the 172 where the windshield is, yeah completely corroded through from salt, and it was a Florida plane. It was just completely not even looked at. They didn't take the seals out to look into those uh ribs stuff. So he said, you know, your mechanic is gold. Make sure you know who they are and you make sure you're not going with the cheapest option when we do our paint.

SPEAKER_04 44:15

So we we send an aircraft out for paint every year. Uh we've been doing that for quite a while. Every time I've been here, I think um 90% of the time they go out to paint because there is corrosion everywhere. So a big part of what they do when they send them out to paint is they take it all to base, they get all the corrosion, all the filiform, everything off it. They coat the whole thing in primer, whole thing in primer to prevent corrosion because it is aluminum, and then they throw the paint over that. So we have multiple aircraft right now that are in desperate need of paint. Unfortunately, GA is huge in Florida and it takes a long time to get into a paint shop.

SPEAKER_03 44:53

Um, but all the corroded airplanes are in the paint shop in the shop.

SPEAKER_04 44:57

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 44:58

It's a bigger one. They went to annual and they ended up in a paint shop. Yeah, wouldn't be surprised. Oh man. Uh, you guys got anything else to add?

SPEAKER_04 45:09

Um I mean, yeah, I mean, I would just say for the owner operators out there, don't be scared of us mechanics. We are here to help you guys, we're here to keep you safe. Uh, especially a good mechanic will pride himself on the people he's putting in the plane. Something me and Carlos do every day is we always say, Would I put my family in this airplane? Yep. And that's what I say for you. Doesn't pass that by Shannon. So not doing the right thing. Yes, we care about our pilots. You guys keep us in business. So uh we appreciate you. Well, we try to.

SPEAKER_03 45:37

We try to do smooth landings, but every once in a while we end up in your shop, and that's usually not a good thing. Yeah, no doubt. All right, guys, if um if you like this content, send it to somebody who you think would enjoy it. Um till next time, thanks for listening, and welcome to Altitude Unfiltered.

SPEAKER_01 45:54

This episode of Altitude Unfiltered is brought to you by Easy Tracker Air. Because let's be honest, monitoring an aircraft can turn into a total net with blocks everywhere, sticking out to square, you don't do it.