fasteddie
Pre-takeoff checklist
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- Mar 27, 2017
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Fasteddie
This was posted on Reddit recently. I thought it was an interesting perspective, and figured this board would appreciate it. Link here, text copied in below:
I bought an airplane. It was a lifelong dream. 6 months later, I'm out. Not because it's expensive to own. I knew it would be. It's not because insurance is high and hard to find. I knew that going in. And it's not because the price of fuel doubled a month after I bought it. I can afford it. And not because "GA is dying" either. After my experience, I don't believe GA is dying,….
…it's long dead and we've just been looting the corpse. Here's my story.
It's been in my blood since childhood. I've been a pilot for 20 years, but always a renter/clubber. My flying activity level waxed and waned over the years, but recent growth in income along with "settling down" in an area with a good club and aviation community enabled me to fly a lot more. I stretched my wings to bigger, faster planes, got my instrument rating, got my wife involved, flew some Pilot's n Paws, etc. It was a great time, but schedule availability and unreliable planes kept me looking for more.
I researched the hell out of aircraft ownership. For years. I explored build vs. buy, new vs. used, talked to tons of owners, did cost calculation spreadsheets, and so on. I got the right memberships to access the right data, forums, etc. We talked it over many times, and made careful decisions. I went in eyes wide open, or so I thought.
The perfect plane popped up for sale. As luck would have it, it was at my home airport. Fit the mission perfectly, had new paint, upgraded panel, great interior, fair price, all the right stuff. I made an offer, went under contract, and got ready to call around for a pre-buy.
The first shop said "we're not accepting new bookings, we're too busy". What? I could understand, "It'll be a few weeks", even "It'll be a lot of weeks", but "no?". And this was a shop that advertised specializing in this specific make/model! Just "no?" Well, maybe it's a fluke. Let's call the next shop.
"No."
And, this was the shop that normally maintained the plane! "Are you sure?"
"Okay, fine. We'll do it, but it'll be $4,500 and 6 weeks out."
That seemed egregious. So I kept calling. I found a shop who would drive 70 miles and do the prebuy for a fair price, 4 weeks from now. I booked it. The seller was ****ed. I offered to work with anyone he could find who was quicker. He couldn't find anyone.
6 weeks later and after a week or so of pestering the shop to send over the results of the pre-buy, I re-negotiated the deal based on the findings and closed on my dream plane. But wait.
By now, the plane was out of annual. The owner didn't want to wait another 6 weeks to close the deal, so he knocked $5k off the price and sold without. The shop who did the pre-buy agreed to knock $1,500 off the annual if I did it with them. Sweet. In 6 weeks. And it would require a ferry permit. Okay, fine. It's worth waiting for. I'll skip the details here, but the FAA went in circles with us for a few weeks, required some field trips for the mechanic to inspect/address certain items, then issued the permit.
Weeks go by. Silence. I call the shop and leave a message. Nothing. Online ADSB trackers show my plane taking a quick flight around the patch. Is that normal during an annual? Who knows. We'll assume it is. Call after a week. Leave another message. "We're getting to it, we got backed up. Next week for sure." Weeks go by. Silence. Okay, one bad apple. Clear skies from here.
Finally, one glorious day they call and tell me to come pick it up. My wife drives me 90 minutes to the nearby airport. I taxi out to the runup. As soon as I add RPM, a screeching noise fills the headset/intercom. It didn't do that before. I can't hear the tower. I taxi back to the shop. He pulls the radios and blows on the connectors. Fiddles with the headset jacks. We fire it back up. Sounds okay now. I depart.
At 500 AGL, the screech returns. I know I won't be able to hear or accept a landing clearance, so I manage to exchange "frequency change approved" with the tower as I exit the Class D and continue to my home airport, which is uncontrolled and sleepy this time of day.
Are you still with me? It gets much worse. I can't fly it back in this condition, so I call the shop on the home field and describe the issue. "I can look at it next week. I'll let you know." Weeks go by. I call back. "I'll look at it this week." Weeks go by. "I'll look at it tonight." Finally.
He calls the next day to tell me I need a $2k alternator. Okay, aviation's expensive, no biggie. I stop by the field that night to fiddle around, just to be sure. In 30 seconds I isolate the issue to a rear passenger headset jack. If I plug a headset into that jack, the sound goes away. Doesn't seem like an alternator to me. Tell the mechanic. He finds that the previous mechanic (who did the annual) incorrectly re-installed the interior trim and the jack was grounding to the frame. Easy fix. I spent 30 seconds of my own barely-know-what-I'm-doing time to do what he couldn't in a month. Shouldn't he have checked something that obvious before ordering me a new alternator? Did he even look at the plane? It was still at its tiedown when I went to the field. So, probably not. Maybe he just quoted me something expensive to get me off the phone. Okay, two bad apples. Clear skies from here.
So now after 3 months, I can finally fly it, right? I take a few VFR trips. Awesome. Oops, low marine layer today, I'll need an IFR departure. I get cleared via ODP, which requires a radial intercept. At the hold short line, I configure the GTN. There's no OBS mode. It doesn't work. Brand new $100k full glass Garmin flight deck and I literally cannot adjust the CRS. There is no function/knob to do it. WTF? Where is VLOC mode? What? Cancel clearance and park it.
Read the manuals, ask on the forums, fuss around some more. It's installed incorrectly. The shop that put in the $100k panel not only configured it incorrectly, they didn't do the basic return to service tests specified by Garmin. I know they didn't because they would've failed it immediately. I didn't notice when I inspected the plane before buying. I didn't think to check OBS mode or notice that the CDI won't switch to VLOC mode. It's not legal to fly IFR, and probably not airworthy at all. Okay, lets call some Garmin certified shops and get this squared away. Voicemail. No response. Voicemail. "I don't work on those anymore". Voicemail. No response. "Call me back tomorrow, I'm busy."
Finally get a Garmin expert from another shop on the phone. Tell him I'll fly it to him and leave it as long as necessary. "You're probably doing something wrong. You're not supposed to change OBS or VLOC modes on the GTN." I explain that the PFD manual specifically says the opposite and what he's describing doesn't work on my panel. "Call Garmin support."
So, here I sit, 6 months later. Still can't fly it, still waiting for support. With no end in sight of the cycle of trying to find someone to fix it, and then waiting for it to be fixed. Every mechanic that's touched it seems to be unable to do work of any level of quality, despite every one of them being a certified expert in this make. And those were the ones who would answer the phone!
And I can't sell it, because I don't have an updated title or registration from the FAA yet. 6 months later.
In my industry, or any other industry I'm connected to or ever worked with/in, any business that functioned this way would be out of business in a year, max. There's only one reason this ****show is accepted. It's because they're the only ones left. The customer has no choice. This industry isn't dying, it's long dead. Those still in it are just turning out the lights on their way out the door, carrying any last thing of value they could find.
I guess I'll follow them out the door before it gets too dark in here. I'm hanging up my wings. I'll find a new dream. I'm out.
I bought an airplane. It was a lifelong dream. 6 months later, I'm out. Not because it's expensive to own. I knew it would be. It's not because insurance is high and hard to find. I knew that going in. And it's not because the price of fuel doubled a month after I bought it. I can afford it. And not because "GA is dying" either. After my experience, I don't believe GA is dying,….
…it's long dead and we've just been looting the corpse. Here's my story.
It's been in my blood since childhood. I've been a pilot for 20 years, but always a renter/clubber. My flying activity level waxed and waned over the years, but recent growth in income along with "settling down" in an area with a good club and aviation community enabled me to fly a lot more. I stretched my wings to bigger, faster planes, got my instrument rating, got my wife involved, flew some Pilot's n Paws, etc. It was a great time, but schedule availability and unreliable planes kept me looking for more.
I researched the hell out of aircraft ownership. For years. I explored build vs. buy, new vs. used, talked to tons of owners, did cost calculation spreadsheets, and so on. I got the right memberships to access the right data, forums, etc. We talked it over many times, and made careful decisions. I went in eyes wide open, or so I thought.
The perfect plane popped up for sale. As luck would have it, it was at my home airport. Fit the mission perfectly, had new paint, upgraded panel, great interior, fair price, all the right stuff. I made an offer, went under contract, and got ready to call around for a pre-buy.
The first shop said "we're not accepting new bookings, we're too busy". What? I could understand, "It'll be a few weeks", even "It'll be a lot of weeks", but "no?". And this was a shop that advertised specializing in this specific make/model! Just "no?" Well, maybe it's a fluke. Let's call the next shop.
"No."
And, this was the shop that normally maintained the plane! "Are you sure?"
"Okay, fine. We'll do it, but it'll be $4,500 and 6 weeks out."
That seemed egregious. So I kept calling. I found a shop who would drive 70 miles and do the prebuy for a fair price, 4 weeks from now. I booked it. The seller was ****ed. I offered to work with anyone he could find who was quicker. He couldn't find anyone.
6 weeks later and after a week or so of pestering the shop to send over the results of the pre-buy, I re-negotiated the deal based on the findings and closed on my dream plane. But wait.
By now, the plane was out of annual. The owner didn't want to wait another 6 weeks to close the deal, so he knocked $5k off the price and sold without. The shop who did the pre-buy agreed to knock $1,500 off the annual if I did it with them. Sweet. In 6 weeks. And it would require a ferry permit. Okay, fine. It's worth waiting for. I'll skip the details here, but the FAA went in circles with us for a few weeks, required some field trips for the mechanic to inspect/address certain items, then issued the permit.
Weeks go by. Silence. I call the shop and leave a message. Nothing. Online ADSB trackers show my plane taking a quick flight around the patch. Is that normal during an annual? Who knows. We'll assume it is. Call after a week. Leave another message. "We're getting to it, we got backed up. Next week for sure." Weeks go by. Silence. Okay, one bad apple. Clear skies from here.
Finally, one glorious day they call and tell me to come pick it up. My wife drives me 90 minutes to the nearby airport. I taxi out to the runup. As soon as I add RPM, a screeching noise fills the headset/intercom. It didn't do that before. I can't hear the tower. I taxi back to the shop. He pulls the radios and blows on the connectors. Fiddles with the headset jacks. We fire it back up. Sounds okay now. I depart.
At 500 AGL, the screech returns. I know I won't be able to hear or accept a landing clearance, so I manage to exchange "frequency change approved" with the tower as I exit the Class D and continue to my home airport, which is uncontrolled and sleepy this time of day.
Are you still with me? It gets much worse. I can't fly it back in this condition, so I call the shop on the home field and describe the issue. "I can look at it next week. I'll let you know." Weeks go by. I call back. "I'll look at it this week." Weeks go by. "I'll look at it tonight." Finally.
He calls the next day to tell me I need a $2k alternator. Okay, aviation's expensive, no biggie. I stop by the field that night to fiddle around, just to be sure. In 30 seconds I isolate the issue to a rear passenger headset jack. If I plug a headset into that jack, the sound goes away. Doesn't seem like an alternator to me. Tell the mechanic. He finds that the previous mechanic (who did the annual) incorrectly re-installed the interior trim and the jack was grounding to the frame. Easy fix. I spent 30 seconds of my own barely-know-what-I'm-doing time to do what he couldn't in a month. Shouldn't he have checked something that obvious before ordering me a new alternator? Did he even look at the plane? It was still at its tiedown when I went to the field. So, probably not. Maybe he just quoted me something expensive to get me off the phone. Okay, two bad apples. Clear skies from here.
So now after 3 months, I can finally fly it, right? I take a few VFR trips. Awesome. Oops, low marine layer today, I'll need an IFR departure. I get cleared via ODP, which requires a radial intercept. At the hold short line, I configure the GTN. There's no OBS mode. It doesn't work. Brand new $100k full glass Garmin flight deck and I literally cannot adjust the CRS. There is no function/knob to do it. WTF? Where is VLOC mode? What? Cancel clearance and park it.
Read the manuals, ask on the forums, fuss around some more. It's installed incorrectly. The shop that put in the $100k panel not only configured it incorrectly, they didn't do the basic return to service tests specified by Garmin. I know they didn't because they would've failed it immediately. I didn't notice when I inspected the plane before buying. I didn't think to check OBS mode or notice that the CDI won't switch to VLOC mode. It's not legal to fly IFR, and probably not airworthy at all. Okay, lets call some Garmin certified shops and get this squared away. Voicemail. No response. Voicemail. "I don't work on those anymore". Voicemail. No response. "Call me back tomorrow, I'm busy."
Finally get a Garmin expert from another shop on the phone. Tell him I'll fly it to him and leave it as long as necessary. "You're probably doing something wrong. You're not supposed to change OBS or VLOC modes on the GTN." I explain that the PFD manual specifically says the opposite and what he's describing doesn't work on my panel. "Call Garmin support."
So, here I sit, 6 months later. Still can't fly it, still waiting for support. With no end in sight of the cycle of trying to find someone to fix it, and then waiting for it to be fixed. Every mechanic that's touched it seems to be unable to do work of any level of quality, despite every one of them being a certified expert in this make. And those were the ones who would answer the phone!
And I can't sell it, because I don't have an updated title or registration from the FAA yet. 6 months later.
In my industry, or any other industry I'm connected to or ever worked with/in, any business that functioned this way would be out of business in a year, max. There's only one reason this ****show is accepted. It's because they're the only ones left. The customer has no choice. This industry isn't dying, it's long dead. Those still in it are just turning out the lights on their way out the door, carrying any last thing of value they could find.
I guess I'll follow them out the door before it gets too dark in here. I'm hanging up my wings. I'll find a new dream. I'm out.
