I think you nailed it again. Just because you personally can’t handle the required responsibility doesn’t mean everyone else is the same. Quite a few owners accept and handle that owner responsibility with minimal issues. Even your hero, Mike Busch, states being an owner comes with that regulatory responsibility and it’s the owner who manages the APIAs and not the FAA like you believe.
But given you’re so steadfast in your lack of ability to fulfill that responsibility, by your own words, perhaps it’s time for you to get out of aircraft ownership and just rent. This would relieve you of that responsibility before you set yourself up to fail. Something to think about.
What a crock of crap.
All I've said is that the requirement is silly.
If I told you that you had a "responsibility" to build, maintain, fix, and inspect something you don't know how to do, you hire professionals to do it and have to trust them in the end. If they're regulated you also have to trust their regulators.
I've not changed any of your many words on the topic. I've said they're a "duh" topic. Anybody who owns an airplane already knows them. And that the majority of owners do their best. I've also said the fleet of machines 30 years old or more on the ramp that fly daily here seem to indicate there's not really the magnitude of problem you grouse about.
Think all the bizjet fractional owners know their 'FAA responsibility" to maintaining their aircraft? Sure. Duh. They hire someone to handle it. They know jack all about turning a wrench. FAA ain't quizzing Warren Buffett on the details of a jet engine.
You seem to want some higher standard applied to the smaller aircraft owners.
I'd they're hiring the local shop and looking over the work as best as they know how as non-professionals, maybe even hiring someone like MB to look over the work also, that's reality. Doesn't matter what anybody says they are supposedly supposed to do with untrained and unqualified eyes to do so.
You're heavily hung up on MB. I can take him or leave him. In the end he's just another mechanic I don't know from Adam. Just like the mechanics my big shop hires. The big shop has mechanics come and go constantly. We deal with the front end guys who've been there for thirty years and sometimes they sign the book, sometimes the people they hire sign the book. The signatures mean the same thing to me.
Part of it is just "welcome to the big airport". The big shops don't want anybody poking around their full hangars and two months of backlogged airplanes inside. They're definitely not running owner mechanic schools.
If they recommend maintenance or fixes we tell em to do it. My lifetime of wrenching on cars non-professionally ***might*** give me a hint if one is making up crap, but if they say the combobulator needs replacing, I'll be hitting the books looking up a combobulator.
The non-mechanical owner who just showed up in his Tesla and wouldn't know a 10mm socket from a pair of vice-grips? Laughable if the FAA thinks they know anything about fixing their Cirrus.
Maybe they'll hire MB to look over their mechanic's shoulder. Maybe they won't. I truly don't care.
I've run into ONE who got sold the song and dance by the Cirrus rental place that he'd make a lot of money leasing back his Cirrus to them if he bought one back when they were starting out and needed a fleet. A few years later more exciting and interesting Cirri were the darlings of their rental fleet and his was sitting around too much. He didn't sound like he had any trouble writing checks for whatever his experts recommended on his.
That's pretty much reality for at least one large group of owners. He's no mechanic and never will be. Never touched a wrench in his life. Zero difficulty writing checks in any amount for whatever the experts want to do. He's relying on the system and multiple sign offs and the other owners he knows for advice.
Same thing with any new students at the flight school. On the day FAA hands them a private certificate they know the same bare minimum standard about aircraft wrenching that Cirrus guy does. Maybe they got lucky and got the instructor who goes above and beyond the stsndard, maybe they didn't. There's no requirement to show them the inside of a magneto beyond a drawing and a basic understanding of how they work.
They know and are tested by the DPE that they're responsible for accepting the aircraft as aurworthy and know what documents to look at which says it is. They're tested to take a decent look that all the big pieces are in the right places, and any gotcha quirks of the type they flew for the checkride.
After that, they're pretty much on their own. They can go buy whatever they like and hopefully their CFI they do an insurance type checkout with and their mechanic like to teach. And hopefully they're receptive.
Around here mostly what they're going to get is a couple of shops that'll tell them they'll come get the airplane from the hangar and fix it and put it back when they're done. They won't be invited into the maintenance hangar most of the time, and they'll get maybe ten minutes of face time with the lead mechanic if they're lucky. They'll probably talk more to the receptionist about the bill than their mechanic.
If it's REALLY broke or something is about to, they'll get invited into the hangar and the mechanic will point at things they don't understand as well as the mechanic and maybe they'll get it, maybe they won't. As long as they nod and smile and write the check, there's no test to see if they actually get it.
Like I said, welcome to the big airport. I've flown out of smaller airports here where you might actually know the names of the two mechanics on the field. And had the airplane fixed at a few of those also. Same problem. I don't know them from Adam. I can look up an exploded diagram of the system and apply what I know from outside aviation to it.
The average non-mechanic owner... They might understand it, they might not. If they run into someone like you who wants to teach, great. If not, they're trusting the system. Maybe they like calling MBs company for a warm fuzzy too. I don't care.
Warren Buffett doesn't know how to fix a turbine. Never will. FAA can call him "responsible" for it all they like. Doesn't change what he knows.
In my case I usually know what's broken and usually could easily fix it myself. The gasket thing is a good example. I need a magical signature to do it. So I don't. Instead I wait two months for the place with the magical safety signature people to come get the airplane and pay them.
My airport literally bans independent A&Ps from operating on the field without paying them an annual business fee. So the mythical nice old guy who operates out of his truck and teaches pilots things either doesn't exist or is doing it illegally. Either they have a business license to be on the airport and paid the airport authority their minor ransom, or they aren't supposed to be there.
It ain't much money (couple hundred bucks a year last I checked) but if we want to talk about cheap... Nobody does it.
Heck if I found that magical mythological teaching mechanic who would come to the hangar and teach us everything he knew while fixing the airplane, I'd pay the $200 if he'd file the paperwork. It ain't about the money.
An I sure the four twenty somethings who bought a clapped out Skyhawk together in another State and are all flying the crap out if it to go chase their big jet dreams after filling their logbooks with time probably aren't willing to hire the old guy or pay his way on to the airport? Sure. They're not a majority of owners around here. Hell, they're probably flying the airplane broken and unairworthy to Kansas to find a cheaper shop rate too.
I don't argue that there's bad owners out there. I argue there's far more "average" ones who have no idea what they're supposed to do other than call up the two local mega shops and wait a couple months for a gasket replacement when they find a fuel leak.
They're not important enough on the mega shop schedule to get any better. Some mini-Warren Buffet's crew can get their airplane in and done tonight to depart tomorrow morning and that owner doesn't know dick all about that airplane.
Does the field need another shop? Probably. Been 30 years and nobody's built one. I'm going with "not gonna happen"...
Would I pay a new shop more than the existing ones? Maybe. I'm sure Cirrus/Tesla guy might too, but he'll lose even more money on his magic money making leaseback. If he didn't sell the plane already.
If you're out there educating pilots on stuff, great. It ain't the norm nor required by anybody other than FAA PRETENDING Cirrus/Tesla guy knows what he's doing in a shop. He doesn't.
MB for all his faults at least offers owners someone who claims to educate. He's no John Frank but John is dead and ain't coming back.
John taught quite a few of us Cessna owners a bunch of things. Hands on, with the cowl and inspection plates off. When I met him there was a whole hangar full of us willing to write him a check to do so.
Money isn't the problem for most owners. It just isn't. Fire up some classes and whole bunches of us will come visit weekly. We don't know what we don't know. FAA can pretend they taught us all they like. Doesn't make it magically turn into reality.
