If you’re a Dash 8 operator, aircraft MRO, or lessor, this post is for you.
This is your go-to resource for the current major Dash 8 components we have available now or in the near term.
Bookmark this page as it’ll be updated often.
Do you have surplus aircraft part inventory?
This unnecessary buildup occurs when you order inventory in preparation for near term consumption.
When that consumption never occurs. Voila! Surplus inventory builds up.
Here’s the impact that this causes to your operation.
It’s not the price you pay, how business savvy you are, or how excellent your negotiation skills are. This is the MOST IMPORTANT skill you need when purchasing aircraft parts.
Your surplus aircraft material was sitting. Rotting. Wasting away on your shelves.
Slowly eating away at your operational results. Chomp. Chomp. Chomp.
Cash was being sucked down the surplus drain. And the only thing you could do was…
Price. How important is it to you? How often do you try and get the lowest price? I’m sure you’re thinking to yourself, “It’s incredibly important.” and “Every chance I get.” And that’s fair. It’s also common to ask how much something costs. Or to reduce the cost of something. We often use price and cost interchangeably. That’s a mistake.
Every aircraft part repair station has two turn-around-times (TAT).
How long the component will take to get evaluated and how long the work order will take once approved.
We'll call these pre-work order quote time and post-approval repair time.
Here’s how you to take the guesswork out of your TATs and better predict your next repair turn-around-time.
Aircraft maintenance is stressful. But who am I kidding, you know this, right?
It's where you spend a large chunk of your operating budget, and where 95% of your stress occurs.
Or maybe not...
You ponder the thought of ignoring it.
Instead, you cautiously pick up the phone.
“Hello."
It’s your boss, the VP of Maintenance and Engineering, and he’s unhappy about the current spending.
He’s beginning to feel the pressure from your CFO.
Repair costs have doubled and they're now taking more time to process, meaning more people must get involved.
You have a pile of repair orders on your desk. They sit, waiting for you to take action. Do you approve or deny them? It’s a constant price and lead time battle.
With your aged fleet, time and material aircraft part repairs is the best strategy for you. It gives you more flexibility. It’s the shirt that fits nice. It’s not too tight where it's choking you or too loose making you look sloppy.
When you adopt a time and material repair strategy, here’s some of the pros and cons to look out for.
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Let’ start with the cons…
As with any decision, you must always consider your downside, or simply put, the cons.
Here’s some of the cons:
• Unpredictable repair prices. MROs will give you an average but the price swings can be great.
• Unpredictable lead times. Nothing is a guarantee.
• Varied customer experience.
• Varied piece part quality.
• Varied piece part pricing. Some MROs inflate piece parts or charge your NE pricing for NS or serviceable.
• You’ll spend more time managing your repair orders.
Just because there’s a few cons doesn’t mean you should avoid them entirely. Time and material repairs can have a great upside, depending on your product or ATA chapter.
Let’s run down a few of the pros:
• You can control the cost by supplying your own piece parts.
• You have more control over your repair orders.
• You can fire your MRO for being too slow or having poor quality.
• The labor rates are either fixed or variable based on hours worked.
• You can avoid MRO bottlenecks by using different tiers of preferred MROs.
Whatever you choose, whether it be fixed rate or time and material, there’s pros and cons of each.
When deciding your repair strategy, sit down and write down your goals. What’s the end result you want to achieve?
If you want more freedom, outsource. If you want more cost predictability, fixed rate. If you want more control, time and material.
Do you know what a properly shipped aircraft part looks like?
Of course you think you do.
There has been many instances where we've received aircraft parts to our facility for repair and they weren't packaged correctly.
Or maybe you received a package and thought to yourself, “what baboon packed this box?”
Between you and me, I've thought this as well.
The parts experience more damage in transit, with thousands of dollars in increased repair costs to show for it.
At Skylink, we have a simple rule when we ship your parts.
We call it the fist rule.
You can learn more about it in this weeks video:
Packing your parts might cost a little more and yes, you may spend some more time, but in the long run it’ll save you thousands in freight damages.
And have you ever tried submitting an insurance claim?
Not fun.
Whether you utilize our shipping service or ship your parts to us for repair, make sure the fist rule is implemented in your shipping procedure.
Have you ever scrapped a BER aircraft part? [CLICK TO TWEET]
You probably wonder what the MROs procedure is to properly “scrap” it.
Or more likely you wonder if they actually scrap it.
Questions race through your mind like what piece parts did they keep, did they turn around and sell the BER core for a small fee, what exactly happened to your unit?
These questions are normal.
It’s common for MROs to have a field day on your piece parts and that's why we created this video for you:
Getting rid of a BER aircraft part is easy.
Best of all you get to keep the good piece parts.
In this short video we show you one way to get rid of your BER unit.
Check it out:
As Skylink’s professional actors, Alex, Colin, Ron and Mark show you smashing your unit is an effective way to scrap your BER part.
Or you can cut it in half, burn it, melt it, soak it, or whatever option you chose as long as there’s no possible way it will ever be returned to service.
The best part is, you’ll relieve all sorts of aviation stress.
This is one reason we have partners from large national airlines to small regional operators taking advantage of the value we create in our repair program.
We know how to scrap, we know the value in piece parts and we know how to relieve stress.
