It's all about the numbers

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RLK
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It's all about the numbers

Post by RLK »

As a AME, how does your employer keep track of what you do all shift?

How is your performance measured?

I have seen in a few AME job ads "performance bonus" what is that exactly?

Does a smaller AMO do this differently than a large airline?

In the wonderful world of fixing cars, my entire shift is monitored down to the minute via a time clock on my computer. I am paid by the hour, but get a bonus (about $300-600 a month) when my billed hours are 90% or higher than my attendance hours. 90% is the expectation, I have found I will get in shit if I go below 75% for the month.

Today I was tasked with replacing the radiator cooling fans on a Audi A6. The labor guide says that the job will take 3 hours and 48 minutes. I read the repair instructions and start on the job. It says to take this and that off. Un-bolt and push forward the radiator off of the rad support, and pull out the fans from in-between the rad and the support. There is not enough clearance to remove the fans without breaking a bunch of stuff. I now have to remove the bumper cover and both headlights to create more clearance for the fans to come out. In total the job took me 6 hours and 15 minutes. If I was working for a dealership, I would have only been paid the 3 hours and 48 minutes not the time that I was in attendance for.

So the instructions and labor time, right from Audi are clearly incorrect. I sorta got hosed, the company that I work for got hosed the most. Does this type of stuff happen in aircraft repair? I remember reading in CAR's about service difficulty reporting, how would that apply to my fan episode?
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photofly
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Re: It's all about the numbers

Post by photofly »

Depends which AMO you’re working at. At some, you’d get a bonus based on how much extra stuff you break, what the markup on those parts charged to the customer can be raised to, and all the extra billable hours you’d charge for replacing them. There’s even more coming your way if the original part you decided to replace wasn’t actually defective, because now you can green tag it and sell it as a serviceable used part to another airplane owner.

At some AMOs, it is indeed all about the numbers.
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Bug_Stomper_01
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Re: It's all about the numbers

Post by Bug_Stomper_01 »

RLK wrote: Tue Aug 30, 2022 9:51 pm As a AME, how does your employer keep track of what you do all shift?

How is your performance measured?

I have seen in a few AME job ads "performance bonus" what is that exactly?

Does a smaller AMO do this differently than a large airline?

In the wonderful world of fixing cars, my entire shift is monitored down to the minute via a time clock on my computer. I am paid by the hour, but get a bonus (about $300-600 a month) when my billed hours are 90% or higher than my attendance hours. 90% is the expectation, I have found I will get in shit if I go below 75% for the month.

Today I was tasked with replacing the radiator cooling fans on a Audi A6. The labor guide says that the job will take 3 hours and 48 minutes. I read the repair instructions and start on the job. It says to take this and that off. Un-bolt and push forward the radiator off of the rad support, and pull out the fans from in-between the rad and the support. There is not enough clearance to remove the fans without breaking a bunch of stuff. I now have to remove the bumper cover and both headlights to create more clearance for the fans to come out. In total the job took me 6 hours and 15 minutes. If I was working for a dealership, I would have only been paid the 3 hours and 48 minutes not the time that I was in attendance for.

So the instructions and labor time, right from Audi are clearly incorrect. I sorta got hosed, the company that I work for got hosed the most. Does this type of stuff happen in aircraft repair? I remember reading in CAR's about service difficulty reporting, how would that apply to my fan episode?
We don’t really work in a flat rate world. Performance bonus’ from amos in Canada mostly depend on the owner’s / Prm’s opinion of you. I have never seen a real quantification for this except at one company where if you didn’t cost the company x number of dollars in missed revenue or damaged vehicles etc you’d get an end of season bonus. That said, how are we going to know as a group how much that is????
Unless it’s written in stone in your employment agreement how it’s distributed / measured it’s just a pig in a poke. As for tracking task hours if you’re doing MRO work or as the military call it “depot level maintenance”, you punch on and off of work orders and tasks much like you would at a car or heavy duty dealership. The customer gets billed in the back end for the hours you presumably work.
There is no hourly rate (that I’ve ever seen) you’re flat rate paid for in aircraft maintenance like automotive flat rate world. I’ve always been paid the hours I work (except if I’m on a day rate which SUCKS). Day rates are usually paid for ames on the road with operating aircraft.

There are labour hours suggested by many manufacturers for some tasks, mostly service bulletins, but not general maintenance. The hours that are published are either very vague (ex. 1-7 hours), Or fairly close to reality, but not aligning with work conditions (us working outside under a headlamp under a picker truck at -25°C , vs. in a hangar that takes half a day to shuffle the aircraft under a gantry) etc.

In the helicopter world we get paid flight pay for aircraft hired on and flying where we do night / field maintenance on operational aircraft.
You get paid per hour (and in some cases a minimum 4 hours wether the aircraft flys or not) the aircraft flys during the day while you wrench on it at night for scheduled and unscheduled maintenance.
While this sounds great you more than earn it and you need a cross shift because depending on the aircraft variant it’s very taxing. Usually guys have a schedule of a few weeks on and off with three guys available for the aircraft at any one time.
For some operators things have become so tight flight pay is almost a joke or non-existent anymore. That has to do with the dwindling work and economy and for me it’s not worth doing in Canada anymore.
There is way more paperwork in our world, essentially filling out at a very minimum the maintenance you perform in the work order and journey log. Depending on the amo this can take 2-3 times as long as the task itself, and as time goes on this paperwork is becoming more and more daunting. That’s not even including all of the internal company paperwork like SMS and CRM training, internal memos, human factors training, fleet specific memos and SB’s, TC memos and time sheets, which range from Monthly, weekly, and more and more daily.
I do bill hours for paper work as everyone should but some of these sycophants will do it at home for free ffs.
Hope this answers some of your questions.
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shaune
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Re: It's all about the numbers

Post by shaune »

Paid by the hour, never a bonus, 8 to 5, overtime rates after 8 hours. Performance at this place is not tracked, union shop but if you are dogging it your co workers will gang up on you....or avoid you. All aircraft are our own, if its broke.....we fix it, on to the next.
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Bug_Stomper_01
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Re: It's all about the numbers

Post by Bug_Stomper_01 »

shaune wrote: Tue Sep 06, 2022 2:52 pm Paid by the hour, never a bonus, 8 to 5, overtime rates after 8 hours. Performance at this place is not tracked, union shop but if you are dogging it your co workers will gang up on you....or avoid you. All aircraft are our own, if its broke.....we fix it, on to the next.
What kind of amo is this? Fixed wing or rotary? MRO, operator?
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shaune
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Re: It's all about the numbers

Post by shaune »

Fixed wing provincial government
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Bug_Stomper_01
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Re: It's all about the numbers

Post by Bug_Stomper_01 »

shaune wrote: Tue Sep 06, 2022 8:39 pm Fixed wing provincial government
Ah ya Roger that
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