The GA maintenance crisis, with Paul New

We often talk about the pilot shortage in aviation, but there's a mechanic shortage as well, and it feels more systemic and also somehow more overlooked.

So before we get into causes and solutions and all of that, give us a sense of the scale of the problem and, and what's going out there in the GA maintenance industry.

Well, the scale, that's an interesting, uh, way to put it.

Uh, if you take your airplane into a shop, you try to schedule.

We often get calls.

Someone says, "Can you do this or that next week?" Or, "Can you do an annual next month?" And we cringe a little bit because we're backlogged for 12 to 14 months and have a, a wait list.

And there are many shops in our situation, in part because the, the airlines and the large corporate world is taking away a lot of our talent, and it's not just a- about the pay.

A lot of people say, "Oh, you can't never make any money in GA maintenance." And it, it's true.

It is a smaller market.

The margins are smaller and all that.

Um, I know someone just talked about yesterday who went to the corporate world, and they're making very large sums of money and working about a 20-hour week.

And I don't know how to compete with that, 'cause we can't work a 20-hour week.

It just doesn't work that way.

Uh, and I deal with, uh, I work with Savvy Aviation, which means I speak to a large group of shop owners around the country and in some other countries, and I don't know of any shop that's doing well that isn't always looking for new talent, and there's no place to go to get them.

The, the military, people coming out of the military, they're great.

We love them.

We, we appreciate their service.

But they don't know what a magneto is.

They've never timed a magneto.

Carburetors, maybe if they're a car geek, you know, and work on an old MGB or something, uh, that's, you know, that's wonderful.

The truth is, it's much easier to go get a, a lawnmower mechanic that's truly a mechanic and turn that person into an A&P, because they have no preconceived ideas of what they do or don't know, and they actually have talent.

But there aren't many lawnmower mechanics [chuckles] out there anymore, so.

Uh, but I would say it's a complete system-wide issue.

If you're, if you're flying a general aviation airplane, you have a problem with a mechanic.

Not with a mechanic, like the mechanic's a problem, with finding a mechanic or keeping a mechanic.