Q: As the Federal Aviation Administration increases scrutiny of airlines’ aircraft maintenance, how has corporate aviation been affected?
A: Corporate aviation has been impacted in a very similar way. The FAA’s oversight in the corporate aviation community is primarily focused on charter operations, and honestly they don’t spend as much time and effort on the private operator …, someone who has an aircraft and uses it exclusively for business of their own but doesn’t hire it out.
So the FAA’s scrutiny on the air-carrier side of corporate aviation, which is the charter operators, has been on the increase, and it’s been a challenge. A company called AMI Jet Charter came under the scrutiny of the FAA, and their certificate was revoked.
Q: Can you explain the subjectivity in the level of oversight by the FAA?
A: We deal with operators all over the country that are under the scrutiny of the FAA in all different regions of the country, and it is painfully obvious to us that the FAA has a different position on the same topics in just about every area of the country.
What we have at times are operators that do what they call FSDO (Flight Standards District Office) shopping. They go out and try to find the FSDO that will interpret the regulation the way that they believe it should be interpreted.
Q: Do you think that people who fly either with corporate aviation or with airlines should be concerned at all?
A: This industry has grown up from the barnstormer days — lightning fast — into the technology we have today. And forever and ever, in the early days of aviation, it was all about integrity — the integrity of the operator and the integrity of the maintenance. I still think that that is prevalent. I think that the integrity of this industry is extremely high. I think we’re safe.
But the problem is that the complexity of the technology is really kind of blowing the FAA away. At times it blows away the people that are trying to use the technology. When I say technology, I mean the new turbine engines that they come out with, the new avionics that they come out with, and the maintenance of those things. There’s been a significant improvement in technology, and it’s hard to keep up with that. So it just throws a whole lot of gray area into things.
They want to do it right. There’s nobody out there in the corporate aviation arena that is in business to try to be unsafe. These guys are pretty good at maintaining their airplanes.
Q: Tell me about what Avtrak does.
A: Aircraft in all cases have inspection and maintenance requirements that are imposed indirectly by the FAA — they’re imposed by the manufacturer. Those inspections and repairs and replacements are on a schedule. They’re similar to if you have a car and you have to change the oil every so often. It’s a recommended schedule in the automotive industry, but it’s a regulated schedule in aviation. (In aviation) it’s not just three or four items like on a car — there’s thousands of things you have to keep track of.
What I found early on in maintenance was that oftentimes an operator would come in to have maintenance performed on their airplane and they really didn’t know what they needed to do. This lack of planning tools and lack of organization of the maintenance requirements on the aircraft prompted us to start a software solution. The objective is to minimize the maintenance downtime and to maximize the time in the air.
Q: Who are your biggest clients?
A: Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. When (a customer) purchases an aircraft, the Avtrak system comes with that. Through the relationship with Gulfstream, some of the customers are 3M and GM and American Express.
Q: Who are your biggest competitors?
A: Probably our biggest competitor is Camp Systems International in Ronkonkoma, N.Y. When we started Avtrak, I would have never dreamed we’d be competing with Camp at this level.
Edited for length and clarity from an interview by staff writer Kelly Yamanouchi
