murphey
Touchdown! Greaser!
I'm on his mailing list and got this earlier today. Ok, so it's somewhat blatant, but still amusing.
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2013 19:58:15 +0000
From: Savvy Aircraft Maintenance Management
Subject: Managing maintenance for a very special client
Mike takes on a very special client. An AOG for this guy would be very bad news indeed.
Christmas Eve Support Call
It seems as if the volume of tech support requests always seems to spike during weekends and especially holidays, and this year was no exception. The morning of Christmas Eve, my iPhone rang. I looked at the caller-ID display, and it showed an 800-number followed by “unknown,” so I figured it was probably some boiler room operation trying to sell me something. I typically would have hit “decline” and had the call roll over to voicemail, but I was in a good mood at the time and decided to take the call against my better judgment.
The connection was terrible; it sounded like the caller was in a remote location with a bad cell signal. After a few tries, I was able to make out that the caller’s name was Nick something and that he was calling for advice about the Continental IO-550 on his airplane. (I think he said it was a Cessna 207, but it could have been a Cirrus; the connection was really bad.)
Nick explained that his oil consumption had increased rather significantly from about a quart in 10 hours to a quart in 5 hours, and that his maintenance folks (he kept referring to them as “elves” for some reason) were advising him to do a top overhaul, telling him that in their experience big-bore Continentals “almost always need a top at mid-TBO.” Nick said he was nervous about doing this, because he’d read several of my articles that talked about the possible risks involved with doing cylinder work on these engines. He indicated he was about to launch on a very long and circuitous winter trip covering close to 20,000 nautical miles in less than a week. Nick sounded nervous about having such invasive maintenance performed just before such a big trip, and was seeking my advice about how to proceed.
I asked Nick all the standard questions: was he seeing a lot of oil on the belly, was he seeing dark oily deposits on the inside of his exhaust pipes, was he seeing any oil on the windshield or on the front lip of the engine cowl, etc. After hearing his answers—yes to oil on the belly and no to the other stuff—I concluded that Nick’s engine had a blow-by issue but not yet close to the point of being a safety-of-flight issue.
“Nick, I think your instincts are spot-on,” I told him. “If I were in your shoes…”
“Boots,” he interrupted.
“…I certainly wouldn’t be doing cylinder work right before a big trip like that. It can certainly wait until you get back.”
“Thanks, Mike,” Nick said. “That takes a big load off my mind. I’d sure feel dumb if I authorized the elves to swing wrenches on my engine now and then found myself AOG somewhere due to a MIF.”
“You HAVE been reading my stuff, Nick!” I said, flattered.
Nick said he’d been looking through the SavvyMx website, and asked whether we would be willing to take on a Canadian-registered aircraft based in a remote area of the far north. I replied that we had a good number of Canadian clients, and that if his mechanics…ah, elves…were willing to work with us, we’d be delighted to work with them. I suggested he enroll his aircraft at http://www.savvymx.com/enroll prior to departing on his trip, so that we could help him with any AOG issues he might encounter on the road. Nick said he would do exactly that, wished me a Merry Christmas, and ended the call.
About an hour later, I saw an email indicating that a new client had enrolled in the SavvyMx program. The aircraft had a Canadian registration number: C-LAUS. I figured it was some kind of a joke, but when I checked I saw that Nick’s credit card had been approved. Hmmm…
Happy Holidays from Mike Busch and the entire team at Savvy!
follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend
Copyright © 2013 Savvy Aircraft Maintenance Management, Inc., All rights reserved.
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2013 19:58:15 +0000
From: Savvy Aircraft Maintenance Management
Subject: Managing maintenance for a very special client
Mike takes on a very special client. An AOG for this guy would be very bad news indeed.
Christmas Eve Support Call
It seems as if the volume of tech support requests always seems to spike during weekends and especially holidays, and this year was no exception. The morning of Christmas Eve, my iPhone rang. I looked at the caller-ID display, and it showed an 800-number followed by “unknown,” so I figured it was probably some boiler room operation trying to sell me something. I typically would have hit “decline” and had the call roll over to voicemail, but I was in a good mood at the time and decided to take the call against my better judgment.
The connection was terrible; it sounded like the caller was in a remote location with a bad cell signal. After a few tries, I was able to make out that the caller’s name was Nick something and that he was calling for advice about the Continental IO-550 on his airplane. (I think he said it was a Cessna 207, but it could have been a Cirrus; the connection was really bad.)
Nick explained that his oil consumption had increased rather significantly from about a quart in 10 hours to a quart in 5 hours, and that his maintenance folks (he kept referring to them as “elves” for some reason) were advising him to do a top overhaul, telling him that in their experience big-bore Continentals “almost always need a top at mid-TBO.” Nick said he was nervous about doing this, because he’d read several of my articles that talked about the possible risks involved with doing cylinder work on these engines. He indicated he was about to launch on a very long and circuitous winter trip covering close to 20,000 nautical miles in less than a week. Nick sounded nervous about having such invasive maintenance performed just before such a big trip, and was seeking my advice about how to proceed.
I asked Nick all the standard questions: was he seeing a lot of oil on the belly, was he seeing dark oily deposits on the inside of his exhaust pipes, was he seeing any oil on the windshield or on the front lip of the engine cowl, etc. After hearing his answers—yes to oil on the belly and no to the other stuff—I concluded that Nick’s engine had a blow-by issue but not yet close to the point of being a safety-of-flight issue.
“Nick, I think your instincts are spot-on,” I told him. “If I were in your shoes…”
“Boots,” he interrupted.
“…I certainly wouldn’t be doing cylinder work right before a big trip like that. It can certainly wait until you get back.”
“Thanks, Mike,” Nick said. “That takes a big load off my mind. I’d sure feel dumb if I authorized the elves to swing wrenches on my engine now and then found myself AOG somewhere due to a MIF.”
“You HAVE been reading my stuff, Nick!” I said, flattered.
Nick said he’d been looking through the SavvyMx website, and asked whether we would be willing to take on a Canadian-registered aircraft based in a remote area of the far north. I replied that we had a good number of Canadian clients, and that if his mechanics…ah, elves…were willing to work with us, we’d be delighted to work with them. I suggested he enroll his aircraft at http://www.savvymx.com/enroll prior to departing on his trip, so that we could help him with any AOG issues he might encounter on the road. Nick said he would do exactly that, wished me a Merry Christmas, and ended the call.
About an hour later, I saw an email indicating that a new client had enrolled in the SavvyMx program. The aircraft had a Canadian registration number: C-LAUS. I figured it was some kind of a joke, but when I checked I saw that Nick’s credit card had been approved. Hmmm…
Happy Holidays from Mike Busch and the entire team at Savvy!
follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend
Copyright © 2013 Savvy Aircraft Maintenance Management, Inc., All rights reserved.
