Dear All,
everybody of us needs a repair shop one can rely on . I want to share and publish my experience with ACG Air-Craft at Allendorf/Eder EDFQ, who announces itself as Mooney Aircraft certified repair shop.
About 1,5-2 years ago I contacted Mr. René Schneider to ask for counseling and advice with regards to purchasing a Mooney M20. After a long and thorough marked search I visited an offer at Antwerpen airport, a Mooney M20M.
In October 2013 I hired ACG-air-craft Mr. Schneider and Mr. Schiedeck-Jacht to do a pre-purchase-inspection in Antwerpen to give advice about whether to buy or not to buy this Mooney. As a result of the pre-purchase-inspection they came up with a long list of maintenance shortages requiring a repair of about 100hrs. They told me that purchasing this Mooney would be reasonable, if the maintenance costs could be included in the purchase price. Technically it would be feasible to do the repair. The main issue of the maintenance would be the tank sealing other repairs were merely electric cables and hoses in the engine compartment, static wicks, spark plugs, shock disks, several temperature probes and a sum of smaller issues. They provided a repair plan and gave a quote of 1 month´s time to do the repair. On the base of this advice I renegotiated the price, bought the Mooney M20M after having the previous owners flown the Mooney from Antwerpen directly to ACG-Air-Craft-Allendorf to do the repair.
After disassembling the Mooney for repair in Allendorf it turned out that a wing spar cap corrosion had not been discovered during the pre purchase inspection. But this is another issue which should not be discussed here any deeper because of fraud by the previous owners. The previous owners fraudulently gained FAA-registration despite knowing that the airplane wasn´t airworthy since 2007 because of wing spar corrosion, covered up and flew this plane for years without airworthiness.
The technically most demanding part of the repairs of the wing spars and tank resealing was carried out in January and February 2014 by Stahl Aircraft Rheinmünster and by ACC Columbia Mönchengladbach (because the latter forgot to reseal some of the tank compartments leading to immediate jet-like-leaking of the tanks they had to reseal the tanks 3 times until it had been sufficient!). Both companies demand paying in advance! The disassembly of wings, fuselage and tailcone was done in December 2013.
Meanwhile nearly 1 year has gone by and since beginning of March it had been hardly worked on my plane. Every week I received a new promise, the maintenance of the airplane would be finished “by next week/in a fortnight”…and so on…. Those promises had never been kept since End of February. A technical reason was never to be seen why the work could not be accomplished. But ever again sometimes for 1 week, then for 2 weeks nobody worked on the plane or only small works had been done for a day. And regularly I was told in 2-week´s routine that “in a fortnight the plane will be ready”. This is going on since February. Already by that time Mr. Schneider promised that all required spare parts for repair had been ordered and are available at the maintenance shop in Allendorf guaranteeing that no further time delay will occur.
200hrs was planned for all repairs. And again they promised every other week to finish the works. This is going on up to now. By the end of July Mr. Schneider told me that 190 working hours were done. By that time I counted that, giving a working week of 5 days/40hrs since November 2013 statistically they had worked just only every 9th day on the plane. I had Mr. Schneider known this fact.
Since August I am told that they can´t finish the works because every week they tell me about another not functioning temperature probe (cylinder head, oil temp, exhaust temp, tit probe…) Hadn´t that been known since the pre-purchase-inspection in October 2013?? And they exchanged those probes sequentially: order a probe-waiting for delivery-exchange the probe-order a new probe-wait for delivery-exchange the probe-order a new probe-wait for delivery-exchange the probe……
Again I told Mr. Schneider, that the non functioning temperature probes (cylinder head, exhaust) had been known since October 2013 and this is documented in the maintenance plan.
At present last week they found out that a cable to the cowl flap motor is broken. Now they wonder how to repair that…(!)
And again they don´t work on the plane for another 2 weeks……Now it is 27.9.2014.
How comes that they didn´t know that already for a long time? How comes that they are not able to repair such a small part?
Otherwise they tell me today that only the landing gear track needs to be adjusted because of the turning radius wouldn´t be perfect yet. Any other engine data etc. would be great….
Altogether: for a planned work of 200hrs, representing 1,5 months of work for 1 single mechanic, the airplane is in this shop for 1 year at present. And yet I don´t know when it´s over…..
I do not know when I might get my baby back…. But I do want to let the Mooney community know about the service quality of this ACG-Air-Craft maintenance shop who adverts its services as a “Mooney certified repair shop”.
By the way, other airplane owners report about very similar experiences, for instance an owner of a Cessna who is based at Allendorf/Eder and needed an engine overhaul.
Dear Mooney Friends, this report may help You to decide to which maintenance You give Your bird to. And I will be happy if I may have some feedback from Your side.
Just to mention: I work as a specialist physician in Germany, UK and other countries. Thus, not having my plane created a major problem to my professional life and business. But this didn´t bother ACG-air-craft at all.
With kindest regards to You all
Dr. Klaus Lang