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

Dear Dr. Lang!
This is really a shocking report - Thank You for sharing it anyway.
As President of EMPOA it is very sad to read this story and I believe that you are not treated with the necessary respect. While aircraft ownership (especially of a complex plane like the Mooney) can be a pain in the a.. sometimes, your experiences are certainly not what we see every day.
Frankly spoken I have no solution for your problem but be assured that the whole EMPOA community will be standing by for any help or advice if you should need it.
We keep the fingers crossed that your bird will soon take to the skies again

Dear Dr. Lang,

your report indeed sounds ugly. However, I have made a completely different experience with ACG.
In spring 2014 ACG did some complex work on my bird, a M20K 252. We installed a rebuilt engine and a new propeller, did an “encore”-conversion, installed a second alternator and an engine monitor.

We had some problems within the project as well. A central spare part was no longer deliverable and we had to find alternatives. The delivery time for the propeller was unexpectedly very long. In neither case this was the fault of ACG.

I have to emphasize the excellent communcation with Justus Schidek-Jacht, who was responsible for my project. Using modern communication technologies (like E-Mail and Whatsapp) I have always been informed about the progress. Inquiries have normally been answered within a few hours.

The works have been completed in about 4 month, which I consider excellent for a small company like ACG. The final invoice was very close to the initial offer. The prices for work and parts have always been fair.

For me it was fun, to work with ACG and I would do it again for sure.

Best regards to all
Stephan Feige

Dear Mr. Feige,
You can call Yourself a lucky man.
By end of October I was told that the repair had been completed. I had a friend of mine the aircraft checked twice. We agreed to have some missing repairs completed. Thereafter the Mooney was flown to my homebase by a ferry pilot. In my homebase a warranty repair had to be done but was not successful.
At present the aircraft is again on the way back to ACG for a warranty repair. 4 weeks are scheduled for the repair. We will see....

Dear Dr. Lang,

Actually, we had agreed not to comment to your entirely incorrect posts but due to some customers responses we would like to clarify the situation:
Delays in the completion of the repairs of your Mooney (which we highly recommended NOT to buy due to several required repairs and especially because of two years missing maintenance history) occured only because of these crucial facts:

a) Mooney Airplane Company did not have the spar caps in stock and the machine which was used to manufacture these parts was broken. An alternative manufacturer accepted by Mooney had to be found.

b) Fa. O. Stahl (Sheet Metal Repair Shop) had cancelled the works right in the middle of the wing-repair process due to the fact that they had not been paid by you on time.

c) Another experienced sheet metal shop now had to be found that was willing to keep up with the repair and do the re-sealing of the tanks.

d) The airplane could have been delivered weeks before, if you had paid outstanding invoices (labour) - as per quotation signed and accepted by you!.

e) The ongoing warranty repair is not related to works performed by our company (ACG) but because of a leaking tank (tank re-sealing was not carried out by ACG - see c)).
Our company will only provide the hangar space for this warranty repair.

It would have been fair to mention that.

Kind regards,
René Schneider -ACG-

Dear all,
of course I can't comment on this particular case. However, our experience with ACG was quite different. We had two annual inspections and a cylinder change done by this shop and are very satisfied. In all cases they charged us within the limits of their quote and were reasonably on time. It may have taken two instead of the promised one week to get all the work done, but this is not bad compared to what we experienced with other shops.
Best Regards,
Dr. Gunter Haug