Over the last year I have only been here now and then and not really posted much at all. The reason is below............
Quite a bit has happened in the last months that has kept me busy and away from the World Wide Web.
It all started last May when the company I work for informed us that the maintenance station I work at would be closed, 90% of the people "redistributed" and the remaining four would be moved into an office down by the ramp. Last November the movement order came through the actual move out of the hangar was delayed until the end of January. In the mean time the redistribution took place. I and my shift was offered places in a base maintenance facility 150km away. We all have houses, children in school etc. With shift work a 300km round drive was not really an option although the company would pay for a hotel for the first 15 months. Having a "weekend marriage" was not really something I wanted to do. In fact, surprisingly none of us did.
So.......
We did what anyone would do in this situation..............met up down the pub and had a couple of beers (or several, it was a long night). Amongst the things discussed, could we do any worse than our present employer.....? So it was agreed we would let the effects of the beer wear off and then have the same conversation over a coffee. This was duly done......
It was agreed that we would reconvene again over coffee and see who was in and who was not. We again met up and those still sitting at the table at the end had decided that we would give it a go to form our own company. The fist thing to do was have a chat with out national competent authority, in this case the LBA (luftfahrt-Bundeasmt, the German CAA/FAA). They saw no problems as long as we ticked all the boxes.
This was last December. Since then I/we have been working every hour God sent and then some. To cut a long story short, we had our national competent authority audit last week. Three days of them looking up your backside with a magnifying glass. We, as expected had a couple of findings which as I type are as close to sorted as being sorted. Next week we should get out authority to carry out line maintenance on Boeing 737NG and Airbus A320 family. For those who don't know, Line covers everything up to but not including "C" check with some limits without going into great detail. Hangar, tools, IT, parts, spares etc are in place. All we need now is a customer or several, although that is also falling into place.
So that has been my life for almost the last year.
Matt
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