Super cheap annual? Cutting corners?

jrh

jrh

Well-Known Member
I have a friend (no, seriously, it really is a friend, and not me, this happened to) who flies a Cessna 150. He found a mechanic who did his annual for a grand total of $375, including the parts costs of replacing a couple brake pads. The plane was in the shop for just over 24 hours from start to finish. The mechanic started work first thing on Wednesday morning and returned the plane to service on late Thursday morning.

Is this for real? Or did the mechanic have to be cutting corners?

This plane is FAR from being a cream puff. It's been sitting outside all the time for the past 20+ years and it shows...windshield is scratched, paint is flaking off, etc. The plane has been flown at least 50-100 hours per year the whole time and if anything breaks it gets taken to a shop right away, so that's a good thing, but still, one day and $375 seems way too fast and cheap for an annual.

Am I way off base here? Is it honestly just a good deal? Or does this mechanic have to be cutting corners somewhere in the process?
 
If the mechanic knows the airplane. In other words, he's familiar with it and been inside it before. Then I don't think it's a big deal. I've had quite a few annuals like that. Never had a problem with it.

I just had a $400 annual on the Luscombe. Thing is, it didn't fly for over a year, just sat in a hangar, and my mechanic had done the previous annual, too. That thing started right up and ran fine when I flew it earlier this week. Good thing the mechanic is also a tailwheel CFI...
 
It depends on how you view an annual.

An annual inspection is just that: an inspection. You pull the panels, poke around with a flashlight, check some tensions, whatever. On a very simple airplane like a 150, that shouldn't take too long or cost too much. If you use the same IA as before, the paperwork research will be easy too.

However, some people don't see the annual inspection as an inspection. They see it as that time of year when they actually fix all the broken stuff on their airplane. They defer repairs for months and perform them all at once along with the annual. That's the reason so many people think annuals are expensive! It's not the annual inspection that costs so much money, it's the whole year's worth of deferred maintenance performed in just a few days.

That's why his annual was so cheap. He flies his airplane often and fixes things when they break. If everyone did that, expensive annuals wouldn't be so common.
 
Most of the people that I know that own an airplane and are willing to do an owner assisted never pay more than 700 or 800. I think I paid around 500 for my owner assisted. I also keep everything in the plane working and fix squawks as soon as they come up.

-Jason
 
If the Mechanic had never seen the aircraft before then it sounds scary cheap. If the mechanic did the annual last year it sounds about right provided there was not much requiring repair. The difference is in the time (and thus money) the mechanic must spend going through the logbooks to check on AD compliance. A good mechanic will review the logs back to day one (date of manufacture) and most logbooks are not particularly organized (they are usually a mess).
When a mechanic signs off an annual inspection he is assuming liability for all work ever done on the aircraft, it is in his best interest to ensure all past repairs are of acceptable quality. If a mishap results from the failure of a past repair the widow's lawyers are going after the mechanic who signed off the last annual not the joker who did the failed repair ten years ago.
 
:yeahthat: If the guy gets things fixed as they break, i think the annual fee was reasonable.Didnt keep the ole T-Craft long enough when starting out to get to the annual. The working planes annuals would almost make you want to cry!:panic::) T.C.
 
I have had 2 annuals cost 215$ on the comanche. But thats with me pulling the panels off. But the last one cost almost 12 grand.
 
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