VirtualVocations

Aircraft Maintenance? A Great Home Business

If you are an airplane aficionado, connected to the general aviation community in your area, and enjoy some tactile work, much of which occurs in an outdoors environment; one small, home- based- business you may pursue is a service for washing, cleaning, detailing and general maintenance of private aircraft. Every airport in the country is ripe with potential customers, and if you love, the airplanes as much as their owners, your business could be a big hit anywhere.

For the most part, owners of private aircraft are very much in tune with their flying machines. Be they for business, pleasure, hobby or all three, they take care of their “babies” as if they are sacred entities. Additionally, anyone who owns an airplane probably has enough money for proper maintenance. Many have more money than time. That is where a general aircraft maintenance service comes in.

Start-up costs are low; dedication and commitment to doing an excellent job are not. The key to making the business work is affirming and sustaining the proposition that while performing the maintenance tasks on a client’s airplane; it must be done as if it were a museum piece, because in the owner’s eyes it is. This means doing things like washing every inch with kid gloves using the best ingredients of soaps and waxes available. When detailing the cockpit and interior, taking extra efforts so that every speck of dirt and foreign matter is removed and using alcohol and q-tips to clean otherwise inaccessible components of the instrument faces and panel. It is a piece of art that demands such attention. When this happens, reputations are built and the business flows to your door.

When I was a kid, I approached a neighbor named “Pete” who owned, or at least I thought he owned an airplane. Turns out, he was a member of a flying club and he retained partial ownership of about six aircraft which where tethered at the local strip. Each member was responsible for doing their part to keep the planes clean and well maintained, which is separate from compulsory federal agency requirements such as instrumentation calibration or airframe inspection necessitating a government certified licensed technician and annual scheduling.

“Pete” was happy to take me up on my offer to help, so I washed, waxed, cleaned, vacuumed and detailed one of the airplanes, which “Pete” had been scheduled to take care of. I did a very good job, making it my business to ensure that this plane was something to be proud of, and I did it for no charge. Soon after, I made an agreement to maintain all of the club’s aircraft in the same manner, this time for a good price. I was too young to sign a contract; otherwise, I would have had the deal on paper.

That was then, this is now, and the country has changed tremendously since then.

What has not changed is an aircraft owner’s affinity for his or her airplane. This business is still a viable opportunity to make extra money or a primary business from a home office. It may seem like “kid’s stuff” to some, but not to the proprietors who are successful in this endeavor.

Posted:Thursday, August 21, 2008