I’m moving down to the Clearwater area in Florida and I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for maintenance facilities for a serious SR 22 in that area. I’m looking for a maintenance facility which is not going to give me some ridiculous bill every year for my annual but provide honest service
Thanks
Scott
its a bit out of your way, and perhaps others have something closer…but east coast aviation at KSUA has been fabulous for me. they’re available at the drop of a hat, well equipped, generally good on spare parts (or can get them), fair prices, and always ready to go. Honest as the day is long. I can share a few stories with you where I dropped Betsy off and Rick either told me that nothing needed work, or made some modest adjustment when i was expecting ‘replace & repair’.
if you look in their hangar, there’s always at least 8-10 Cirrus’ in various stages of pre-buy/annual, or repair.
highly highly recommend them
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I used to live over there but I would like to stick within two hours of my home field for annuals.
There is a serious shortage of A&P’s in general, and only a handful of independent Cirrus specific trained technicians in Florida which will limit your options. Outside of the new Cirrus factory service centers in Orlando and Kissimmee, the other authorized service centers are, well, not ideal. I fix lots of their mistakes.
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Steve Miller at Fixed Wing in Lakeland.
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If you join Savvy, they maintain a list with ratings of facilities that maintain Cirrus aircraft. For my first annual, they vetoed three service centers that are close to me because of bad service/ratings.
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I do as much self maintenance as possible. Also, these Cirrus are really fairly simple to maintain. Fixed gear, continental motor, etc. I’ve kept my annuals to around $3k a year with repairs between annuals. I have had one place that had the annual at $10k and I nixed a bunch of stuff (not airworthy) down to $4k. I’ve been around the block and I’ve had this sr22 for 15 years now. Personally, I prefer avoiding cirrus centers because they tend to be more expensive. I appreciate your comments.
Never take your plane to Kissimmee Cirrus Center. They will bill you 15 hours labor for 3 hours of work at like $165.00 per hour, absolutely RIDICULOUS.
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What job did they bill you 15 hours for?
That’s why this year I paid for that savvy aviation service. I had to change to a different person to do my annual inspection since the person who was doing it retired. And so I wanted to get some recommendations from them as to whom would be good to do the work. There are too many people who overcharge or think that just because you have an airplane. You can waste a ton of money on it.
There are also too many owners that think since they got an inexpensive annual a couple times, probably from an IA that didnt do a thorough job, that annuals should all be in that price range.
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Having been a pilot for many years, I feel that annuals don’t need to be so intensive. If it ain’t broke then don’t fix it. You will get the guy who wants to rip apart your perfectly good engine at 2000 hours because of a number. I don’t buy that and I don’t like wasting money
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What is required during an annual inspection is to inspect all that the Maintenance Manual requires to be inspected. That’s it and the extent of the inspection is fixed. Any airworthiness issues have to be corrected and everything else is optional.
The base price of the annual includes only the inspection.
This has been discussed numerous times on the Member Forums.
When one goes in for an annual, he or she should require the facility to provide a list of every discrepancy. Then the owner and shop need to sit down, discuss each discrepancy and decide what to do about each.
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“What is required during an annual inspection is to inspect all that the Maintenance Manual requires to be inspected. That’s it and the extent of the inspection is fixed.”
There’s checking AD status, checking ICAs that may be present due to any STCs that have been applied. If multiple STCs have been applied, consideration as to whether or not they conflict. Does the aircraft still meet its type certificate requirements? Life limited items? Do I see any items that indicate mx has been going on that is not documented?
Excellent mx documentation can go a long way with expiditing the checks on these items, but excellent documentation is rare.
If I have to spend hours pouring through logbooks and other data to figure things out, that time should be paid for above and beyond the flat rate of the inspection.
Yes communications with the IA about what to correct and how to go about it is important as well.
I just dont think that many IAs are out to take advantage. IAs shouldn’t be judged by using the cheap IAs, that do less than good work, as the standard.
They also shouldn’t be judged by those that do take advantage.
As an IA, part of my consideration of even doing an annual is who flys this airplane, are they recklessly and careless? Do they do alot of owner mx and nothings documented.
If so I dont want my name in their books.
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I do understand the IA’s aspect. Having been through 20 or so annuals, I would say that there are people who make mountains out of molehills and those who do the proper inspection. The same plane can go through two different inspections and have grossly different prices and repair lists. Since I am changing who does my annuals, I thought it would be prudent to have an expert service confirm what needs to be done.