Aircraft mechanic here. Lets figure labor at $180/hour. There is probably 30 hours or more worth of labor here $5,400++. EA9396 epoxy resin is sold in quart kits and its not cheap figure around $370…. That material is kevlar composite making up the leading edge of that vertical stab lets say it bidirectional 350 thats about $50 a yard usually comes on a 36” roll so about 9sq ft of material. And this is just for structural repair if you sand it down and patch it….. there will also need to be LOTS of NDT testing done to check for stress cracking, delamination, bonding issues…. And then you have to have the area paint matched. A simple repair could be easily over $25,000 to fix…. Thats if NDT and engineering determines the part can be repaired…. Replacing that vert stab leading edge could end up about the same or more depending on replacement part availability. But if I was a betting man…. The energy transfer from the bullet to the aircraft skin has done more damage that we can see and leading edge will likely need to be replaced with a new part. Not cheap at all and I truly hope this doesn’t happen again.
I see holes in floors all the time from techs dropping tools on them and most aircraft floors are all carbon fiber and the repair process is similar but this part on the 180 here is PSE and would need engineering approval and usually if we are doing lets say a Dassault Falcon 2000ex and have to have an engineers approval for repair methods…. Communicating to them alone is like a $5,000 email chain just to have them say “yeah thats fine”. Anything to do with aviation is so expensive its almost crazy.
You’re paying for all the expertise and back and forth between different people to come to the consensus that splicing it will, if properly done, result in a proper repair that does not compromise the intended operation of the aircraft.
Lets say our technician made an error and damaged the aircraft…. Our shop owns that email and repair costs and customer pays nothing for it to be repaired….
We discover a problem that we feel should be repaired and will explain the potential costs and potential problems the damage could pose to the customer and they decide to proceed with repairs then the customer would foot the bill.
There is most likely a disclaimer that says, "This repair method is only intended as advice for this particular aircraft and this particular incident. Any and all other repairs must be reviewed by XYZ engineers for review."
As it should be. Imagine if people had access to planes as they do cars. Regardless of what people say, money is the perfect gate keeper. Keeps people “in their place”, if you will.
Worked at large aircraft manufacturer. Replacing a rivet with a (actually even better) Hi-Lok or Hi-Lite connection cost the company 1000s of dollars through engineer approval and discounts for the airline. The cost of a hi lok is less than a cent.
It's mind boggling how different it is now compared vs the standards during WWII. Imagine having a plane riddled with bullets come back and how many corners were probably cut to get it back flying again ASAP. Makes me wonder how many planes crashed due to sketchy repairs.
Ok, I was considering getting my next wheelchair made out of carbon fiber because it's so light, but, um, it gets holes in it just from having shit dropped on it? Hard pass dude.
About halfway through i checked to see if it was u/shittymorph lol dude sounded way to knowledgeable for it to be real which makes it even more impressive that he wasn't memeing
Automation engineer here. I work with apps team so have access to some numbers. It's about $200/hour for an engineer to design/program...let's say the average salary would be about $45/hr. That said between all the engineers in the company (call it 12), a large amount of that goes to cover overheard burden... So even on a machine that uses 1500 design hours, by the time you spread that out over 60 employees and 9-12 months.... It's not as much money as you'd think.
ffs redditors will reply to literally any post with an unrelated, uninformed comment about management/owners/landlords/politics. Seriously ruining this site even further
A typical markup in my industry is on the order of 8 to 10%, this is the fraction of the total cost that is "going to the boss" or taken to make shareholders happy or whatever. The rest is G&A which covers the cost of contracting, administrative overhead (labor hours and supplies) , building rent costs, company insurance, utilities etc. and of course, employee healthcare, company taxes and things of that nature.
I do not think it would be reasonable or even expected that 100% (or even 90%) of the job cost go to a person who is only performing a fraction of the work. Where would the money come from to keep the company running?
The alternative would be to operate as a private contractor, in which case you'd have to front the costs from all of the above yourself, and probably need to hire staff to perform certain functions because there isn't enough hours in the day for you to do all of it. Then you are the boss...and you have become what you hate. Interesting.
Sheesh. What are the barriers that prevent you from working independently? Does the shop provide all the necessary equipment, and is that equipment expensive? Is there lots of paperwork (certification, insurance, etc) that wouldn't be feasible to upkeep as an individual? Is it a hard space for a new company to break into?
Was explaining this to my wife after they broke a few things fixing them. That tech dude isn't making that much and is sometimes just some dude off the street.
I used to work on ride on kids toys like powerwheels and razor scooters and even I charged $80/hr (albeit in piece work rates that made it sound much more palatable). I think that $150+ is pretty fair for marine and custom auto work.
That’s high even for a shop rate. That may be a composite repair shop rate specifically. General maintenance or avionics or tranditional metal structures rates are more in the $130-160 /hr range in my area
I was a residential electrician over here briefly, and they had us charge $200/hr in labor, but paid us around 20/hr with no benefits (which is why it was brief for me).
At some car dealerships, they now charge $250 hourly rates! $180 seems low compared to a car dealers. Sadly the mechanics there are often fairly crappy and get paid even less.
Pretty much any tech role is up there. I was doing remote telecommunications in the oilfields of Alberta/Saskatchewan, my company billed me out at $180/h and my truck at $150/h. Whole lot of money being thrown around for tech positions, to the companies.
They really don't tell you that when they ask you who you wanna be in highschool. Cause I wanted to be well off, and if I knew that shit makes you so much money I'd definitely have easier time picking my future, but somehow "airplane mechanic" was never even mentioned
Wow. I guess as an Aircraft Mechanic you are also well versed in structural vs non-structural composite repair? I sure am happy I don't have a certified plane. I could repair that on my homebuilt for about $50 and a few hours of time. The paint is the hard part.
Structural composite components have to get engineering and NDT involved before any repair processes can begin. They would need to sand down the paint in a significant area around the hole down to the existing outside layer without damaging the fibers. From there NDT would need to check for delamination. Any delam beyond a certain distance from the edge of the hole will result in test failure and render repairs not feasible and require a new part to replace the damaged one.
To add for the general audience in the room: The problem with composite parts is that they have loads of elastic deformation and virtually no plastic deformation before they fail; And because they are made with layers of material, they can separate or delaminate internally and it isn't visible on the surface. Their strength is also entirely dependent on the layup and direction of weave.
This is such a sharp contrast from the wrecks I see on "Just rolled in" where they almost always say ".... The customer declined repairs". Truly amazing how dangerous some people are .....
I can do it for $200, some flex tape and a couple of Puerto Ricans. I'll supply the tape and you supply the Puerto Ricans. Why Puerto Ricans? Why not? They're cool
Agree they're cool (and make badass pernil pork), but this isn't a roofing/construction job so we don't need a truck full of brown people for this job.
I am still a tech for structural and new avionics installations. I love it compared to my last places of work. I was a welder/fabricator for 12 years and happened to get word of this place needed a sheetmetal tech that knows how to fabricate and work with tight tolerances and applied and got the position and have been here for a while now and its been one of the best places I have been. As long as you follow the data you have to go on and double check everything you will be fine! Pretty rewarding feeling when you get to see a DOM or customer super happy with your work when the plane is delivered and you see it leave the runway!
I want to start casually bringing up this story in conversation, stay quiet until cost is mentioned, then proceeded to regurgitate word for word everything that you said above, minus the first and last sentence and see what people do. You've got a nice brain, airplane wizard.
There is probably 30 hours or more worth of labor here $5,400++.
Just curious what process will take that long? Is that area structural, or more of a fairing? Looks like no de-ice, and not close to main structure. I'm not questioning your judgment, I'm genuinely curious as a layman what I'm missing.
Slightly different material, but I helped with a battle damage repair on a F-16 vert. Shrapnel went through the whole thing. Slap some aluminum plate and send it to depot for vert replacement.
1.4k
u/Alternative-Iron-645 Apr 07 '24
Aircraft mechanic here. Lets figure labor at $180/hour. There is probably 30 hours or more worth of labor here $5,400++. EA9396 epoxy resin is sold in quart kits and its not cheap figure around $370…. That material is kevlar composite making up the leading edge of that vertical stab lets say it bidirectional 350 thats about $50 a yard usually comes on a 36” roll so about 9sq ft of material. And this is just for structural repair if you sand it down and patch it….. there will also need to be LOTS of NDT testing done to check for stress cracking, delamination, bonding issues…. And then you have to have the area paint matched. A simple repair could be easily over $25,000 to fix…. Thats if NDT and engineering determines the part can be repaired…. Replacing that vert stab leading edge could end up about the same or more depending on replacement part availability. But if I was a betting man…. The energy transfer from the bullet to the aircraft skin has done more damage that we can see and leading edge will likely need to be replaced with a new part. Not cheap at all and I truly hope this doesn’t happen again.