The state of play
Nobody in this industry is confused about what's broken.
Ask any A&P at any field in the country and you'll get the same list, in roughly the same order. It has been the same list for thirty years.
The work is the easy part.
The inspection takes a day. The paperwork, the sign-off, the logbook entry, the form that has to be filed somewhere and found again in four years — that takes longer than the wrench time and pays nothing.
The invoice ages faster than the airframe.
Work completed in March, invoiced in April, paid in July — if it gets paid. Independent shops are financing their customers' maintenance out of their own pockets and calling it normal.
Coverage is a patchwork nobody chose.
Liability protection that depends on whose hangar you're standing in. Health insurance cobbled together from a marketplace plan and a spouse's employer. Certificated professionals carrying the risk profile of a gig worker.
The part is always somewhere else.
Three vendors, four phone calls, two different prices for the same PMA part, and an aircraft on jacks while everyone waits on a shipment that may or may not be the right revision.
A reputation that can't travel.
Twenty years of clean work, satisfied owners, and zero findings — all of it locked inside one shop's filing cabinet and a handful of people's memories. Move fields and you start over.
The owner is the last to know.
An aircraft goes into an annual and disappears. No status, no running total, no realistic return date — until a five-figure invoice arrives with line items nobody explained.
What we're after
We're not going to pretend we have it all figured out.
We know what we're aiming at, and we know who has to be right for it to matter. Three things we're unwilling to compromise on:
Credentials that carry weight
A certificate number should mean something verifiable, portable, and owned by the person who earned it — not by whichever shop happens to hold the file.
Money that moves at the speed of work
The gap between finishing a job and getting paid for it is a solved problem in every other trade. Aviation maintenance should not be the exception.
Records that outlive the shop
Maintenance history is the single largest factor in an aircraft's value and its safety. It should not live in a cardboard box in a hangar loft.
Before we build another line of it
Tell us what actually matters — in your order, not ours.
We're asking two groups the same fundamental question, because a platform that only works for one of them isn't worth building. Rank the list, add what we missed, and say it in your own words.
Providers
You hold the certificate.
A&Ps, IAs, repair stations, and shop owners. You've spent a career finding out what doesn't work. Put the priorities in the order you'd actually put them in — and tell us what we haven't thought of.
Start the provider surveyOwners & Operators
Your name is on the tail.
Sole owners, partnerships, flying clubs, flight schools, and flight departments. You carry the downtime, the invoice, and the risk. Tell us what you'd fix first if it were up to you.
Start the owner survey
We're not ready to say exactly what we're building.
We are very ready to listen.