Silvaire wrote:
Snoopy wrote: @arj1 ask the owner about maintenance…Or just use your eyes and other senses as people have done forever, and continue to do successfully.
@Silvaire, I have no problem with the flight school I’m using now.
My point was: how the owner should act if they want some regulated company to oversee the maintenance program?
CAMO provides the OPTIONAL service at the moment.
And I agree with many people here that say if you have a reasonable CAMO with reasonable prices, it adds value and saves your time, which may choose to use.
Or you may choose not to! I’m all for having a choice!
But if you start saying that CAMO should have no place in owner’s life then you deprive some owners of that choice.
Snoopy wrote:
However, renting doesn’t mean a change of operator.
Do you have a regulatory reference for that? IMO “operator” is so poorly defined that you could just as well consider the renter to be the “operator”. In most cases I’d say that actually makes the most sense.
This is a great example of how completely insane bureaucracy takes on a life of its own.
As I explained above I would guess in most cases CAMO involvement makes maintenance worse, not better, or maybe the same if mechanics generally ignore it, assume responsibility and do what needs to be done as they discover it. In the real world people make things work properly, and people (you) make sure they are adequate for their own use.
Silvaire wrote:
As I explained above I would guess in most cases CAMO involvement makes maintenance worse, not better, or maybe the same if mechanics generally ignore it, assume responsibility and do what needs to be done as they discover it. In the real world people make things work properly, and people (you) make sure they are adequate for their own use.
@Silvaire, that is assuming that the mechanic is actually OK and not a complete muppet. And for a non-specialist it would be sometimes hard to determine that.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Do you have a regulatory reference for that? IMO “operator” is so poorly defined that you could just as well consider the renter to be the “operator”. In most cases I’d say that actually makes the most sense.
I attended a legal seminar and the aviation lawyer said the same, EU law doesn’t define the operator. It requires an updated definition. For the context of this thread and to tread on the safe side, the owner = operator.
I don’t think a renter qualifies. Too little control. Can a renter decide about maintenance? Can he rent it to someone else? Nope…
A renter for a prolonged period of time (lessee), who is named in the aircraft registration documents, is an operator to me.
Austrian law (loosely translated):
“The holder (operator) of a civil aircraft is someone who operates the civil aircraft on his own account and has the power of disposal over it that such an operation requires.”
I attended a legal seminar and the aviation lawyer said the same, EU law doesn’t define the operator
That’s interesting, because the entire Brussels attack on N-regs hangs on the definition of “operator”, and various claims have been made about it being defined; this search digs out a number of posts.
How could Brussels, with its unlimited financial and legal resources, have done such a thing? 
Silvaire wrote:
As I explained above I would guess in most cases CAMO involvement makes maintenance worse, not better, or maybe the same if mechanics generally ignore it, assume responsibility and do what needs to be done as they discover it.
@Silvaire, do you have any actual experience of how the CAMO system works as basis for such a claim?
I have a huge amount of experience with the real world effects of similar systems being implemented in engineering sustainment work of aircraft related systems. That is quite enough, trust me on this.
Starting with a handful of capable people it grew into $1.5 billion spent trying to create reliability and serviceability in the face of mindless bureaucracy.
Silvaire wrote:
That is quite enough, trust me on this.
I don’t think I do since I have the experience of seven or so years managing a club with several aircraft under CAMO. To me, a CAMO is just an expensive convenience and if I could get a club member with sufficient knowledge/interest and stamina to do the work for free, I would. But in no way can I agree that having a CAMO makes maintenance worse. More expensive, certainly.
(Our aircraft each fly about 400 hrs/year so managing the maintenance of several aircraft is not something you do at your leisure.)
