Aviation Maintenance Roundtable: Defining Excellent Customer Service

What constitutes excellent customer service in the business aviation maintenance arena? Aviation Maintenance invited users of these services to share their insights about their experiences, both positive and negative. Duncan Aviation graciously hosted the event at their headquarters in Lincoln, Neb. Our panel included (at right, clockwise from lower left) Warren Pletan, director of maintenance for Midwest Aviation; Wade Albrecht, director of maintenance for TWC Aviation; Brian Hooper, director of parts and procurement for JetCorp; Rich Tomaro, chief of maintenance for Remax International; Greg Duncan, maintenance technician for International Paper; Jad Donaldson, chief pilot for Avfuel Corp.; and Murray Thole, aviation maintenance manager for Pioneer. A lively discussion ensued.

AVIATION MAINTENANCE: What do you think is the biggest challenge you’re facing in aviation maintenance today, in the business aviation world that you work in?

BRIAN HOOPER: Timely repairs, for aircraft, but also for components. Quality.

GREG DUNCAN: We’re definitely cutting back on fuel for savings. They’ve told our people to stop flying so much because we were doing lots of 30-minute trips, which we’re not doing anymore. We tend to load up with fuel at Memphis. That puts a lot of wear on the tires and brakes, so they can fly somewhere, not have to fuel there for ten dollars a gallon, and come back to Memphis.

JAD DONALDSON: Parts availability; being able to get the parts when we need them. Every time we go to get the parts, even for our suppliers, the service centers, for Duncan, it’s even hard for them to get the parts.

WADE ALBRECHT: Pretty much keeping up with the constant flow when you’re running multiple airplanes. Aircraft comes home with problems, you have until the next morning to repair. I also agree with parts and manpower issues.

MURRAY THOLE: Time is the ultimate thing, being able to get the airplane ready to go for the mission.

WARREN PLETAN: Another challenge is communications amongst our executives, flight crews and maintenance personnel. Safety is always paramount in our industry. The communications need to flow to make sure that everyone understands that we’re all striving to enhance safety.

AM: What are the trends that are happening in business aviation maintenance right now?

MT: I think the biggest trend right now is the single-pilot operators. Getting away from the larger flight departments. You have one pilot, the chief pilot. And he’s the maintenance director and the airplane washer.

AM: How is that working?

MT: I think it’s a challenge for the service providers. The guy comes in, and, oh, by the way, my tire is flat, but can you do a phase five on there. They have no clue that’s a two-week inspection. They expect it to be done and done right now. It’s going to be a big challenge for the industry.

AM: Jad, do you have an A&P certificate?

JD: No, I do not. I rely mostly on Duncan Aviation to support us. But, this is where we’re at. We have multiple pilots, but no mechanic. I know a lot of operators like us. I think we represent about 80 percent of the industry, whereby there are a lot of people that have gone out and bought a jet. They have the means to buy the jet. They hire one pilot and say, take care of it. Pilots, you know, we all think we’re the greatest thing in the world, but the reality is most of us don’t have a clue when it comes to what maintenance is involved. I see a lot of people — they’re not trying to be unsafe, but when it comes down to money on maintenance and things that need to be addressed, or they need to fly the next trip to keep the boss happy, I think they’re flying the next trip. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about that.

WA: I’ve seen that out where I’m at over the last couple of months. Maintenance guys losing their positions. It’s cutting costs and they’re the first ones to leave.

RICH TOMARO: I’m just the opposite. My boss is very aviation oriented. I think I’d be the last person to leave, hopefully, but we’ve got three pilots and myself. We have two guys to take care of the hangar. And he’s very safety-oriented. Something is wrong with the airplane, take care of it, and we’ll find some other way to get there.

AM: When we did the last year’s salary survey, many of the comments we got were concerns about scheduling. Are you guys under a lot of schedule pressure, time pressure? Are you working long, late hours on a regular basis?

MT: It does happen occasionally. Couple weeks ago, I was up all night. We had a trip the next day and had a circuit breaker pop the night before. It took all night to get it going.

AM: And when something like that happens, is it pretty flexible after the fact that you get a comp day, you get some time off?

MT: Oh, yeah. I’m salary, so I’m there when I need to be there.

GD: Sometimes we schedule conflicts with our inspections. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with the inspections due to the schedule. That’s a real challenge. We handle it the best we can. We stay there late at night sometimes. Sometimes our airplanes don’t come in until midnight. So if they’re broke, we fix them. When I have to be there, I’m there. It’s a challenge, keeping up with the inspections.

WP: We’ve got a great dispatch department who can schedule airplanes around maintenance activities, so we can put airplanes down, and get the maintenance done on the aircraft if it’s required. With corporate executive travel you have to be flexible all the time. When a trip pops up an aircraft could be dispatched within two hours; it’s a constant.

BH: On the 145 side, a lot of the maintenance is scheduled in so that we can plan for the parts purchases. Even on the operator’s side, you know, if you can plan out your inspections so if you’re going to some of the 145s for repairs, you can help out these providers so they have better time to plan for you. If you have a service bulletin kit, get that stuff on order ahead of time.

JD: There is an enormous amount of pressure on anybody to make sure that the aircraft, the asset is always available. At the end of the day, that’s what we’re all about. In a single-aircraft operation like ours, it’s very hard to schedule time off. It would take a large team of A&Ps to be prepared to do the kind of turns that we need to do, that a place like Duncan can handle for us. Many times we give them not more than two and a half to three days to turn out a two-phase inspection, over a weekend, because it’s a sales tool and we need to have it available to us.

AM: When you schedule maintenance with a service provider, what keeps you up at night as that date approaches when you’re bringing the aircraft in?

RT: Are we going to get out in time?

BH: We’ve had components going out when it’s in for an inspection. You call the day before to different providers for the component services. They say it’s going to ship. Then you call them the next day for the tracking number and they say, well, it didn’t ship. There is no reason, you know. A lot of providers are good at saying, it’s done, it’s shipping, here’s the tracking number because you need that part to complete your inspection. That keeps me up sometimes.

GD: This is the first time, my 2000 is the first one to be at Duncan Aviation for C-check. And my biggest concern is can I get downtown? Can I find my way around? Because these guys, these mechanics are excellent. They’re sharp. I have no worries.

WP: I think it’s probably just the unknown of what might be discovered during the package and how that is going to impact the out date.

MT: Yeah, it’s the unknown of what they might find and making the out dates. When I schedule downtime, I don’t care if it’s three months, tell me when it’s going to be done because our scheduler is going to schedule a trip the next day. There is not much flexibility on the back end.

WA: With Brian’s aspect, what gets you sometimes is when that part is gone — when they ship a part out. You don’t have any control any more, so that ultimately affects your out date. If you send something out the last week of your project, and everybody is like yeah, we’ll get it. We’ll get it. Then it’s not there.

AM: Do you feel like the service providers really listen to your concerns and needs?

RT: Not everybody, but I would say the majority of them do.

WP: Not everybody.

RT: If they want your business, they’ll listen. If they don’t want you to come back, they probably won’t.

AM: Are there providers out there that don’t really care whether you come back or not?

RT: Yes, it’s kind of sad.

GD: Honeywell is the hardest.

WP: Can you get through the Honeywell phone tree?

GD: You have to call this guy in India and this guy in California and this guy in Arizona. You get switched, and finally say, forget this. Rockwell Collins is a very good supporter.

BH: We needed to order an avionics part the other night from Bendix/King. We got the price availability in the daytime. It was 4:30, called them up. We can’t ship it. I’m like okay, well, then we need to counter to counter. We have a flight tomorrow. Can’t do that. So we ended up going back out and getting another quote. Luckily we had all the price and availability sheets so we could find another source for the part.

AM: Comparing the aviation maintenance business to other businesses, how do we stack up in terms of customer service?

BH: I think the relationships between aviation customers and maintenance providers are probably stronger than if you go to a tire dealer or an automotive shop. Because they’re just trying to get you in, bill you and collect their money, so that they can go on to the next job. I think the maintenance providers try to make sure that they’re happy when they leave and that they do a good job.

RT: I have to agree with that. I think that’s pretty much true. It’s a closer bond between ourselves and the providers. They want your business. They want you to come back. I think it’s strong here because the guys on the floor really take care of you. That’s everybody’s mainstay, the guys on the floor. If you listen to them, do what they want to do, you’re going to be in good shape.

GD: Aviation maintenance is high quality, committed to safety. We have three mechanics. Each one is responsible for one of our three airplanes. We look at these airplanes from head to toe on a daily basis. I don’t think you can have that done in your car, so high quality.

WP: There is definitely a relationship that’s built up between the operators, the vendor and the service provider. You have to feel that everybody is honest with each other.

MT: I think it’s easier to get results in the aviation industry. It’s easier to find out who to go to that can answer your question.

JD: From my perspective, and I’m not an A&P, so I don’t have the same insight that everybody else at the table has, but I view it as being a really high-touch industry, all based on relationships. It’s a relationship with a service center on the corporate level, but it’s really the relationship with that individual that you have to interface with, when you’re on site, and the team of people that they put behind it. Because at the end of the day, as a pilot, that’s what I care about, my passenger’s safety.

WA: That’s very true. You build relationships with different centers, and you get a feeling of how you’re being treated as a customer versus, oh, it’s just another guy with an airplane. So it’s a culture thing. That’s very true.

BH: Does it help build the relationship more to go in with the aircraft for maintenance? As opposed to flying in and jumping on the airlines and flying home?

JD: That builds the relationship, as overseeing maintenance on one side, but I see that the mechanic’s side is one side of the industry and the pilot’s side is the other. It seems like all our books are written to put us at odds with each other. I have kind of bridged that gap and said, you know what, I don’t know all about this. I want to know more about it. So I sit on the floor with the team leads and say, teach me.

BH: Show me what’s wrong.

JD: Show me what you’re doing. Show me what you need. One of the things that helps with it when they find a problem, as Warren said, what keeps you up at night, is not knowing what they’re going to find. They find something. We can’t get back out. But if I’m there and they find it, they say, look, this is the problem. What do you want us to do. Because the next question is always, you know —

BH: How much.

JD: How much. What’s it going to be. How much time, more than how much. Many times it’s what’s the time constraint. I’ve got a trip. What am I going to do? If you just drop the plane off and you leave, you don’t care enough to stay with it, I think sometimes that can get translated to the floor, like this guy doesn’t even care.

BH: Exactly. Well, then if you want to meet your out date, and you’re unavailable to sign the quote that they provided to you, it’s just going to extend your out date at the end.

JD: I look at the big picture. The more I spend on the front end, and I really spent several years working on the floor and being there every time we were in for maintenance, so now I’m able to pull back a little bit. As a manager, I can pull back and say, okay, my project manager, he knows what I want. My team leads, they know what I want. I get a phone call: We found something. There are many times my project manager calls me up and says you’ve approved five things today. He knows that if they are safety of flight items, regardless of what it is, unless it’s a really big ticket item, he has the authority to approve it for me because I don’t want to slow down my out date. If it’s a big item, he calls me and says, what do you want to do. But that relationship is built.

WA: I’m a firm believer in having somebody with the aircraft when it’s in. I’ve gotten bitten on the same thing. Different service centers, went home for the middle two weeks for a six-week project, got an updated report two days after I got back. Those first two days they had more hours on the airplane than the two weeks I was gone. So we’re two weeks late. If the customer is there, they know he’s there. They continue driving on. Somebody else does not become the priority.

JD: I want to add one thing to this. You’re absolutely right. There are times when we have to go to some facilities, I don’t leave the airplane. My pilots don’t understand that. Because if I’m not with them, it’s just another crew out. I make one of them stay with the airplane. But what I’ve noticed is there is nobody working the airplane if I’m not standing there. A lot of times the things that are important to me are not always important to them. I have no tolerance for anybody rashing the airplane when it’s in maintenance. I have no tolerance for extra scratches. I know everything about my aircraft. Sometimes I’m picking my inspection panels up off the floor and placing them properly. Sometimes, I’m making sure that we’re not losing screws. So I think once the relationship is built, you have the comfort level. But if you don’t have the relationship built, and you’re just stopping in, you have to stay right on it.

AM: Why do you think that the aviation maintenance industry is so relationship oriented? It’s an expensive piece of equipment, but why are these relationships that you’re talking about so important in this particular industry?

MT: It’s just such a close-knit industry. Somebody leaves a place, you’ll probably see them someplace else. It’s very, very personal; you get to know the people. A lot of times, all their pictures are there. You can see their kids, you start talking about ball games and it’s just very personal.

WA: It’s very much a small community.

BH: Now, as far as customers and employees, too, they go to different companies. You go to Dallas Love Field, those guys go out to lunch and they know everybody at these restaurants. They’ve worked together. I mean you have always got to work with everybody in the industry, no matter what point in life you’re at.

JD: I think unlike other industries, they don’t have a responsibility of a failure. There is a lot of pride in workmanship, but there is also the underlying thing, if it’s not done right and there’s a problem, this is not going to be good. Most people don’t knowingly want to put anybody in harm’s way by being complacent on their job or a lack of integrity. I think in other industries, you mentioned the auto industry, I’m not sure it matters. If a tire falls off, you’ll probably be all right. We probably won’t be.

AM: So it really comes down to that signature in the logbook.

JD: It does. I’m not trying to make it a legality, regulations thing. I’m taking it higher than that. I mean people have to live with themselves if somebody finds out that you knowingly made a huge mistake. At the end of the day, that’s going to wear on you. We’re all human. I mean everybody makes mistakes. These are complicated machines. They require a lot of oversight to keep them operating flawlessly. It’s a real tribute to the industry that they’re able to do that, but at the same token, when you sign off, your name is on it.

AM: Can you all give me an example of a time that you received excellent customer service?

MT: I guess my last one was my last maintenance visit. You know, I had that circuit breaker pop. We had a trip the next morning. We went to a facility, they had the part. They had a crew that ended up working all night on it. It was easy to change a part, but then they had problems getting the leak test completed and basically stayed up all night, very few breaks. There always seemed to be somebody working on the airplane while other people were taking a break and they just kept going until it was done.

AM: Do you feel that service providers ever go beyond your expectations?

MT: You know, it goes back to that last problem. You know, they stayed all night. And they came in with another team and kept working. They were even very receptive to my input as far as, you know, let’s try this and try that. It looked like they had come to the end and they were going to change a gauge because they had it hooked into the system. That’s when they got the failure. So let’s just try the gauge out, pull the gauge out and test it by itself. And sure enough, it was not the gauge, but they had almost come to a stopping point, that they were going to order a gauge, and that was another, you know, six, eight hours. It was good to see that they were receptive to the input and ideas.

JD: We were en route from Florida to Arizona. The number two FMS lost power; totally went off line in flight. We got on the sat phone and called Duncan. They have copies of all of our schematics, so the electrical schematic came out. The project manager assembled a team in Battle Creek and they began to work through the electrical system on the aircraft to determine what was causing this. They worked it all through. While we were on the phone, for quite a period of time, heading towards Scottsdale, they determined that we lost a relay and where the relay was located. When we landed at Scottsdale, a golf cart pulls up with a Duncan logo on it and the guy says, I’ve just got to pull the circuit breaker panel apart and see if this is the right part. He’s holding a relay in his hand. He pops the relay in. FMS was up and everything was fine. I was in the middle of a four-day trip. I had probably 25 takeoffs and landings to do and this would have definitely stopped [the trip]. We got it fixed at the airport we intended to go to. The guy was in the cockpit for 20 minutes. We were fixed.

AM: I have to say, that’s pretty impressive.

WP: Yeah, that is.

GD: We’ve had some incidents with our engines. We’ve gotten really excellent customer support from Landmark, which is now StandardAero, I believe. They are excellent. Like we had one problem with our intake. There is acoustical material that chips away. There is no way that we could do it. They were down there within six hours and did it right there in Memphis. They were gone in a day. So we had excellent support from them.

AM: So they flew in?

GD: They drove from Illinois. They’re actually coming here because my right engine is a little sick, so they’ll be here next week. Good bunch of guys.

RT: Well we’ve got the Duncan satellite shop, avionics shop in our field in Centennial, and they’re always Johnny on the spot, if you need them. Like Murray said, everybody pitches in, in the industry.

RT: I can give you an example. We were based at Centennial Airport in Colorado. And before Duncan had a satellite shop there, the avionics shop. But they also just brought in an engine shop now. They have engine guys. We used to go to Bombardier because they used to take care of the 731s. And all the sudden — they stopped. We had a Hawker. And they just wanted to deal with their own products, Challengers and Learjets. Duncan got wind of it and opened up an engine shop, helped us out a lot.

JD: I have all kinds of stories.

AM: That’s why we’re here.

JD: We were flying out of New Mexico one day. And we thought we hit a bird on take off. Birds are one of those things, kind of an unknown that is pretty scary and can cause some big problems. We thought it just hit the nose and bounced off. It wasn’t that big of a deal. We climbed up and didn’t see any anomalies. Got up into the 30s, and called the passenger up from the back. I said, I think we hit a bird. Do you want to go back and look at the right engine for me, because you can see our engines from inside the aircraft. He gets back there. His eyes got big. I think you better get back here. I’m looking back at the engine instruments and everything is running great. I was the non-flying pilot that day, so I go back and take a look at it and sure enough that bird was all over the inlet. I got on the sat phone called Duncan. I mean any time, day or night, I just seem to get somebody to answer the phone. Here I am at altitude in the airplane. I said, look, this is what just happened. The first thing out of, out of Duncan’s mouth was “Where are you?” Well, we happened to be not very far from the San Antonio Citation Service Center. Next call was right to the service center at San Antonio. I said, look, I’m in the middle of a trip. I don’t have time to mess around. You guys are going to need to get with the program. When we landed, they greeted us with seven people — three cleaners and four inspectors. They had a borescope sitting out on the ramp. They started running it down through that engine and they started looking at it from front to back. Within 20 minutes, they gave us a clean bill of health. They said the bird went through the bypass, never did hit the hot section. There was no damage to the engine. And that, I mean that’s...

AM: That’s a great response.

JD: That was a team effort. You know, Duncan told us what to do and what we needed to be thinking of. Smartest move was to get to a service center right away and just have it looked at. Again, we had no anomalies. We had no problems. But the point was, if you land somewhere and you find that there are bent fan blades, you’re on the ground.

AM: Most places offer a survey when you leave. Are you taking the time to fill those out and do you feel like the questions are providing good information back to the service providers?

WP: Some of those surveys are quite long and some of them are quite short. You might have a service provider that wants to know 20 different answers. Some people may only want three. I’m more inclined to answer the ones that have three questions. But as far as the right information getting back, I hope so. The important thing is to make comments on those as well, to put your thoughts down on where the vendor can increase their customer experience and the services they’re providing.

BH: I think it’s important that when those comment cards come back, the lead and the technicians need to see that comment. That’s what we’ve done before. It’s a great comment about the work done on time to make sure that the guys know. It increases morale.

JD: They’re not always positive. I know that one of the places we have gone for maintenance, I was absolutely disgusted with the [lack of] cleanliness of the facilities. One of the things I commented on was how bad their floors were. There was tie wire, screws. I didn’t want my aircraft even pulled in there. I thought, I’m going to come out with three tires that aren’t going to be worth anything, so I put that on my comment card. I was back about eight months later. They had two floor cleaners running and totally resurfaced the entire floor and cleaned up the interior of the hangar. I may have helped shed some light on their internal pressures because all the people on the floor were just tickled that they had a new facility to work in.

AM: What extra amenities do maintenance service providers offer that help make your stay more productive and more enjoyable?

MT: An office with internet or wireless and a printer. With all the different nationalities that you’re seeing, it almost needs to be a private office almost anymore. Because if you get somebody else in there talking on the phone it’s hard to concentrate or hard to carry on your own conversation.

WA: Yes. Actually, to keep a conversation private, sometimes you walk out in the parking lot. So, yes, private offices, I think, would be a significant one.

JD: Most of them have it. I mean availability of cars for external transportation, internet access, private offices, weather data and computers, at least a decent lounge where you can relax a little bit. Those are kind of the key amenities that I usually look for. The ability to have a conference room available, if you need it. Sometimes you have to bring a bunch of people together to have a discussion.

AM: How could maintenance providers better manage the total experience of the service they provide, start to finish, scheduling to out the door?

BH: One point of contact. At least, you know, when you pick up the phone, you know who to call, as opposed to, well, on second shift you need to call this guy and on the weekend days it’s someone else. It’s going to be one person you need to call, I think.

AM: Do most providers have that?

RT: Yes.

WA: Seems like more centers are going to a project manager or project supervisor. A one-person point of contact.

JD: I called that guy at 11 o’clock at night, he answered his phone. He says, I’m in bed. I said, I wish I was. But he gets me to the right people. That doesn’t happen everywhere. You end up at a switchboard and then you get moved over to somebody else and you don’t have the established relationship. If you’re having an intermediate problem on the road, that’s where you need those service centers to be able to step up. I don’t think that happens everywhere. The last thing you want to do is have to make five or six phone calls, especially from a sat phone.

AM: With bird guts on your inlet.

JD: That’s right. Exactly.

We’d like to take this opportunity to once again thank Warren, Wade, Jad, Murray, Brian, Rich and Greg for participating in our roundtable. Their experiences and expertise made this an enlightening experience. We’d also like to thank Duncan Aviation and the Duncan family for their gracious hospitality. For more from our discussion on what constitutes excellent customer service, go to our Website at www.aviationtoday.com/am for a daily excerpt starting October 15, 2008. — Editor