The International Cessna^® 170 Association

A comment by the original poster on the Cessna 170A flap question made me think about a problem I am hearing more about. Are we losing A&P mechanics faster than we can replace them? Are enough new personnel coming along? What does this mean for GA?

The IA I work with at a small airport in N Calif. cannot recruit/keep mechanics in his medium size GA shop. He loses the younger ones to bigger and better things (automotive, government, air carriers, etc.). The older ones are slowing down. Can’t keep up. He is not accepting new customers and is behind on annuals for existing ones. Luckily, he has a son working who is cut from the same cloth and show’s promise of keeping this good operation going, but they are struggling. Anyone else seeing this trend?

Quick story that shows part of the problem: One of his long time customers (Beech Baron owner) bought a new tow motor and asked my IA friend if he’d put it together for him. “Hope you’re not going to charge shop rate for something powered by Briggs and Stratton.” Replied: “Tell you what, I’ll charge you same hourly rate as the local small engine shop”. “That’s fine” replies the customer. Until he finds out the small engine hourly rate is $10/hr more than the shop rate of a first class aviation maintenance facility. (The customer begrudgingly paid the bill but didn’t get the message)

Makes you wonder.

... and every time he signs a logbook he puts his livelihood and life savings at risk.

It is a problem around here. Airlines are sucking up mechanics fast as they can. Same with pilots. We can't fix planes fast enough. Can't find more people with or without an A&P to help.

I’m seeing the same thing here in eastern upstate NY. Three AP/IA’s who worked on the local small GA aircraft retired in the last 5 years and no one has stepped in to replace them. We also lost an avionics shop. The remaining avionics shop in Middlebury VT is doing well though. They have tons of business.

DaveF wrote:... and every time he signs a logbook he puts his livelihood and life savings at risk.

That is one of the advantages of working for a CRS instead of under your own certs.

Avionics-wise… one of the better repair stations nearby, a “Mom and Pop” shop, has lost their hangar-lease and had to move off-airport. They were forced out of the previous hangar lease by a larger outfit just moving to town…who has no interest in such small jobs.

Now the problem is …they cannot perform even simple things such as 91.411 or 91.413 checks on transponder/encoder/altimeter recert’s because the airport requires a shop to have a hangar to perform work on aircraft.

So if you have even a minor radio problem that can be isolated to the unit itself…you can bring or ship the unit to them for bench repair…but they are not allowed to remove/re-install it on the aircraft…. which pretty-well limits their ability to serve their long-standing customers. This will likely run them completely out of business, as he is a disabled-vet and relied upon workers to do the actual airframe-related tasks …which his shop is now prohibited from accomplishing without a presence on the airport.