Cost of unscheduled repairs

[dgger]

Fellow DA42 Owners,

I am a first time aircraft owner and have owned a used DA42NG for about 18 months, now. When I first got the aircraft, I was well aware of most costs - at least those I could plan for such as insurance, maintenance, etc. The one uncertainty for me was the cost of unscheduled repairs. Clearly, stuff breaks and it does break in aircraft, too. Just at which rate it does I was not quite prepared for.

My aircraft is a 2008 NG conversion which I took over in April 2016 and have since put on 285 hours or 15h/month. While this is clearly not flight school usage the aircraft has not been seen damage cause by extended periods of idling. My total cost of unscheduled repairs (not including upgrades, scheduled maintenance, consumables or lifetime-limited parts such as props, gearboxes, etc.) comes out to a bit over $60.000 or at more than $200 per hour.

The big ones where:

• New Tanks after algae infestation
  New Gearbox / HP pump following mechanical failure
  New Waste Gate Controller
  New Cooling Tank after leak
  New Fuel Injectors (unknown cause)
  New Pitot Heater (my mistake)

I have read and re-read the discussion on what to charge oneself for an hour of flying, but get vastly different numbers. Did I just get a dog or is there anyone else with numbers in the same ballpark?

[FTEJerez]

Hi Peter,

We currently operate a fleet of 6 NGs and growing, roughly 150H/month on each airframe.
I can tell you that, except for the fuel tank contamination (we keep the aircraft topped up overnight and it never stays for more than a day in the tanks), we've seen it all.
Our impression is that some aircraft and engines are definitely better than others, but there isn't a clear "forsaken" aircraft in our fleet.
I am curious though on those injectors (extremely long story), could you please tell me how many hours that engine had? (I hope you claimed some type of warranty on the injectors)

As a ballpark number, we are currently spending for spares (just spares, unscheduled and scheduled, no man hours or fuel) roughly 80 EUR per flight hour.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

[Wilfried]

Hi Peter,

I do not want to make me unhappy because of my flying addiction. Therefore I refuse to keep track of my flying costs. I own a 2010 NG since 2015 (400h flown since then). I was quite often surprised by the maintenance cost. My plane is under CAMO, although I am the only pilot of the plane (few times I rent it out) and I was very often left by the impression that if CAMO and Maintenance is the same organisation, "one is seeding, the other is harvesting". Therefore I am going to terminate the CAMO contract (a friend of mine is an aerospace engineer and will keep track). Hope to reduce maintenance by this.

But probably this is not your problem (just wanted to post it). But maybe you might this consider to be relieving. When I bought the plane, I had an awful lot of repairs e.g.

. new waste gate valves
. new fuel pressure pumps
. stall heat
. prop governor
...

Thereafter my plane was flying in beauty without any problems for 100's of hours. Last month I was struck by big repairs for timing chain replacements, a gearbox replacement etc. But again thereafter the plane is doing great (taking away some limitations in every day/week usage that I will post once in a while).

So my conclusion is "do not worry, be happy". It is a great plane (with limitations that most of us are aware of) and we should not be troubled by big bills once in a while. It just happens and "flying addiction" (and a good income...) helps to survive them.

[dgger]

I am curious though on those injectors (extremely long story), could you please tell me how many hours that engine had? (I hope you claimed some type of warranty on the injectors)

By the time that one injector failed the engine was just over 800 hours/8 years. A single injector had failed (Maintenance suggested it might have been due to water ingestion, but ... maybe ... maybe not ...). Unfortunately, all four injectors had to be replaced as the old style injectors had been phased out and the new ones could not be mixed with the old ones. $8.000. Bang!

As a ballpark number, we are currently spending for spares (just spares, unscheduled and scheduled, no man hours or fuel) roughly 80 EUR per flight hour.

Hope this helps.

It very much does. Thanks for your insight. I assume you spend about a third of what I spend given that you include parts for scheduled maintenance as well. I trust that means it can only get better

[dgger]

I do not want to make me unhappy because of my flying addiction. Therefore I refuse to keep track of my flying costs.

Hehe. That's a smart policy - I agree.

I don't want to nitpick or complain. Yes, flying is costly. However, knowing what to expect, I sleep much better...

I hear your comment about the CAMO. In my case I am quite have as I have found a fantastic and very helpful one that operates independently from the maintenance shops. No conflict of interest here.

[robert63]

Out DA42NG is a late 2011 model which has been sold by Diamond in 2013. We purchased it with 53 hours end of 2014 and now we have 668 hours.
We had some minor issues with heating and alternate air bowden cables, light bulbs and a failed MFD backlight. However, caused us some troubles because we lost flight hours. Only recently we had a broken ribbed V-belt at the right engine which has never happened before according to Austroengine. This caused a major damage like new cylinder head etc.
I get the impression that issues often come up short after maintenance which is also what Dries said at a recent interview. Our aircraft is flown by 2 pilots only. We have more hours than landings and we fly it at 75% only. It is always hangared. I really expected that this would be sufficient to keep unscheduled maintenance costs low. But when I read your lists I‘m somewhat shocked.
Our calculation is with € 120,-/hour for scheduled and unscheduled maintenance.
So far this was sufficient. We also have CAMO with the same shop that does the maintenance. Also we keep the tanks full all the time. When we return to our home base we top them up so we do not need to wait for fuel at the next departure.
The cost of spare parts is extremely high. You can see it with backup batteries. Once they have a EASA form 1 the price is ten times higher than without. For exactly the same battery from Panasonic.
Even though we also have the flying addiction I am not prepared to pay any price for this. This is like € 1.500,- landing costs at an exotic airport for using one mile of asphalt for 2 minutes and some parking. I don‘t go there.
Maybe we can get an extra discount for spare parts if we are with DAN? Or we get a flatrate maintenance fee of € 80,-/hour no matter what happens. This would all help us to sleep much better and enjoy the addiction.

[CFIDave]

The cost of spare parts is extremely high. You can see it with backup batteries. Once they have a EASA form 1 the price is ten times higher than without. For exactly the same battery from Panasonic.

The backup ECU batteries for the DA42 NG are listed by Diamond with a standard Panasonic part number (rather than a Diamond part number). Therefore before every annual inspection, I've always purchased 4 of these genuine Panasonic batteries new from Amazon, and saved considerable money:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001XVAPA0
Is there a reason you can't do this under EASA regulations?

[robert63]

The cost of spare parts is extremely high. You can see it with backup batteries. Once they have a EASA form 1 the price is ten times higher than without. For exactly the same battery from Panasonic.

The backup ECU batteries for the DA42 NG are listed by Diamond with a standard Panasonic part number (rather than a Diamond part number). Therefore before every annual inspection, I've always purchased 4 of these genuine Panasonic batteries new from Amazon, and saved considerable money:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001XVAPA0
Is there a reason you can't do this under EASA regulations?

As far as I know this is not possible under EASA regulation. But will check again the next time.

[janders]

The cost of spare parts is extremely high. You can see it with backup batteries. Once they have a EASA form 1 the price is ten times higher than without. For exactly the same battery from Panasonic.

The backup ECU batteries for the DA42 NG are listed by Diamond with a standard Panasonic part number (rather than a Diamond part number). Therefore before every annual inspection, I've always purchased 4 of these genuine Panasonic batteries new from Amazon, and saved considerable money:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001XVAPA0
Is there a reason you can't do this under EASA regulations?

Where do you find these batteries? I can't seem to locate the genuine panasonic ones anywhere. The amazon link doesn't have the G at the end of the model number and isn't in stock.

[janders]

I've looked at the part's catalogue for the 62 and it says the appropriate part is LC-R127R2P* where the asterisk represents the country code possibilities P, J or G.

I've also heard that diamond now uses the NP7-12 now that the LC-R127R2P is discontinued, but I can't find the official diamond source on this.