In a few day's your bird will hit the hangar and begin its c-check.

You feel your heartbeat beginning to race. Thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump. Thump-thump. 

Your blood pressure is rising. You have no idea of what issues are going to arise or how you'll resolve them.

For now, you just have to wait. 

Your aircraft is scheduled for 45 days of c-check maintenance glory. "Whatever," you think. You want it done as soon as possible. 

But in the back of your head, you think, "what if we didn't plan well enough." 

You know that every day your aircraft is in the hangar,  it's another lost day of revenue. You feel your heart beginning to beat fast again. 

You’re stressed and this dang maintenance check is causing you to lose sleep. You know one single issue could bottleneck your entire maintenance check.

What are you going to do? How can you make sure that despite any issues that arise, this project will be done on time?

Does this sound familiar?

We had an Airbus scheduled for c-check.

Everything was looking great. We had pre-planned all the primary rotables, expendables, and consumables off the standard task card.

But surprise! At the final days of the maintenance check, we were asked to functional test 20 components in addition to the component c-check kit we were already supporting.

20 components were delayed 14 days due to logistical inefficiencies and planning.

We had to pull some strings, AOG a few parts, and exchange a couple more to avoid the costly dance with delays.

Throughout the 30 days, our client was calling and texting in the middle of the night. He couldn’t sleep. And rightfully so. The long hour days caused more stress.

Aircraft maintenance checks are stressful. You have a deadline that must be met. 

But what if you didn’t have a partner to answer your call in the middle of the night? What if they didn’t help you problem solve? And even worse, what if you were stuck dealing with multiple vendors, coordinating multiple component shipments, and overseeing your c-check maintenance and it’s components alone?

Now that’s stressful.

One of your biggest stresses during a c-check is coordinating your material needs. 

A better aircraft c-check material process

Your responsibility is to oversee the maintenance project, get the material you need and complete the projects on time. 

It’s nearly impossible for you to oversee the project, cut orders for all your rotable, expendable, consumable, and tooling needs, follow-up with your orders, organize the shipments, receive them in, and allocate them to the project. And don't forget the smaller details of having to pay vendors, find solutions to issues and cancellations, resolve customs problems and the list goes on and on.

The coordination of aircraft material is tedious.

A better way is to outsource this responsibility. 

You may be thinking that sending out a mass RFQ for every part you needs sounds right but it's not necessarily.

You're adding chaos to your process, increasing marketability and pricing for the parts you need and creating unproductive work for yourself.

You need a partner who can quote your entire c-check list, whether it's 1 part of 1,000, process one PO, and ship it in a consolidated shipment directly to the aircraft MRO. 

This type of focus takes a trusted material partner but it saves you a ton of time and money.  

Your partner must have experience in c-check component kitting. 

Here's what you need to do: 

1. Choose a trusted material partner. 
2. Send them a list of all the c-check material you need.
3. They'll quote you within 6 - 8 hours. It should not take longer than this. Sometimes it varies depending on the aircraft, the volume of parts, etc. 
4. You'll review the quote promptly and send PO. 
5. You'll get an order confirmation with exact ship dates. 
6. You'll check the status with your material partner and advise shipping details. You'll continue to add items to PO if things keep arising that you need. No problem. 
7. Voila. You receive the parts as you need them and you only had to chase and trace with one partner. 

The best way to alleviate your c-check stress is to work with a trusted material partner.

You’re human and you can only do so much.

Decide who you want to work with that has knowledge in this area (supporting c-check material kits) and work together to streamline your maintenance project.

It’s that simple.