FBO, MRO, or FAA-145?

What’s the difference between an FBO, an MRO, and an FAA-145 repair station?

First, the similarities: They all provide services related to aircraft support and repair; they turn the wrenches. They are highly regulated by the local aviation authorities (FAA, EASA, CAAC, etc.). They are all FAA-145s.

The differences are their clientele and the breadth of services that they provide.

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FBO stands for Fixed Base Operator. When you step off a plane and someone hands you a glass of champagne, you’re living large at an FBO. An FBO is a private jet terminal used by the hoity-toidy jet set. If you must ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it, dahling. FBOs can be very luxurious, with a spacious lounge for passengers and a smaller one for airplane crews. You can read your Conde Nast Traveler while enjoying a cup of complimentary cappuccino. The crew may even have sleeping rooms to take a nap (I’ll bet that Denver has a mile-high club on the ground). The snazziest FBOs pucker up and offer private meeting rooms, showers, concierge services, gift stores, and car rental desks (“What color Jag-you-ar do you want this time, Buffy?”).

FBOs often offer inside and out aircraft cleaning, with some providing limited maintenance. Many FBOs have a hanger and/or on-field tie-down aircraft parking. But with all this and the Maybelline used to pamper the deep-pocketed glitterati, they still make most of their money selling jet fuel.

Not all FBOs are so fancy, particularly when they cater to general aviation propeller planes and crop dusters. The coffee was fresh yesterday and the creamer is a dry powder, but it’s still an FBO.

Pilots do a walk-around inspection while they’re waiting for the weather to clear. ?This includes checking fluid levels and kicking the tires. One cause of engine failure is when the fuel tanks fill up with air, so pilots generally look for that first.

An FBO, however, goes further, providing light aircraft check services. They do a daily check, which is a cursory review of the aircraft log to find obvious damage or deterioration. Hopefully, no wasps have built nests in the pitot tubes. Most FBOs also perform an “A” check, which is the next higher level of scheduled maintenance. During an “A” check the technician will open panels, test the lights, lube the landing gear, and test some systems with Built-In Test Equipment (BITE). But don’t worry, the FBO ground crew won’t bite (unless you’re into that).

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MRO is short for Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul. In the aviation aftermarket, we care more about MROs. That’s where the rubber meets the runway. If you want to see the money, honey, get tight with the biggest MROs. It’s the aircraft checks (and the ensuing wire transfers) that support the FAA-145s and brokers downstream.

MROs are thick with aeronautical engineers who graduated from Embry Riddle, and they’ll make sure you know it. Big MROs are the soup-to-nuts provider of everything it takes to make a plane airworthy. They are contracted with the plane owners to provide aircraft checks at scheduled intervals. MROs are there to handle big responsibility, big money, and mega data. Their product liability insurance premiums are staggering.

While MROs generally have a free hand when it comes to buying nuts’n’bolts, airlines may be involved in outsourcing the more expensive purchases and repairs.

Large MROs have their own hangers on the airport which are so big that they can paint entire planes – and that’s just the beginning.

Y’know the kid who used to rip the wings off flies and the legs off daddy longlegs? He works in an MRO now. That’s what happens to planes during major checks. Engines, wings, and landing gear are all disassembled like a corpse in medical school. The difference is that the MROs can put everything back together better than it was before. And they’d better do it right because their own engineers will be aboard the test flight.

When Podunk Regional Airlines folds, leaving passengers stranded and their leased planes repossessed, the leasing companies need to put the planes through a check to ensure that they are still airworthy. It makes sense – any airline that couldn’t meet payroll or pay for fuel was already cutting corners on maintenance.

The MRO finds and fixes the sloppy maintenance before the plane can fly again because proven airworthiness is, like, a good thing. A good MRO is one that you never read about in the newspaper, but when a plane goes down, the blame game is on, and the MRO comes under intense scrutiny.

In addition to the physical work, MROs (or independent contractors) may offer document and record review when a plane’s ownership changes hands. Today, one plane’s paperwork might not fit into an extended van, but blockchain technology will soon alleviate that burden.

MROs also offer line maintenance, which is performed on the flight line (on the tarmac or in the hanger). Flightline mechanics troubleshoot problems with the engines, landing gear, and wings, as well as the IDGs, pumps, motors, valves, avionics, lights, and other accessories. But they don’t know how to fix that stuff. Accessories that are suspected to be defective are sent for test and repair to specialty repair stations.

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These are the FAA-145 repair stations. They proudly frame their FAA certificates by the front door – and each year the FAA (and maybe the FBI, too) comes down on a few of the bad players like a ton of bricks, leaving thumbtack holes in the wall where the approvals used to hang. Too bad, so sad, good riddance, it should have happened sooner. Every time the FAA pulls the ticket of a rogue shop a chorus of voices sings, “See? I told you so!”

Although they pursue flat-rate contracts directly with the airlines, most repair stations operate on a time-and-material basis for individual repairs. Airlines are under no obligation to patronize any particular repair station, so these nimble shops are always on their best behavior. They are hungry, competing with their peers and OEM shops based on their personalized customer service, lower prices, and faster turnaround times.

The independent FAA-145s seek an edge wherever they can find it. Incentives can include perks such as extra support such as free exchanges, free shipping, extended warranties, volume discounts, and rebates, all while maintaining by-the-book quality.

But do you know what’s really free? Nothing – ain’t no free. Every benefit comes with a cost, usually hidden. Anyone who thinks that they’re getting something for nothing probably still believes in the tooth fairy. No, Virginia, there is no Santa Clause. All that flight tracking of his sleigh is hooey.

Therefore, the independents try to develop personal relationships with the airline buyers, and the buyers appreciate that, as they don’t like to be treated like a number.

Repair stations fix individual pieces of the aircraft, but most of their people never see an actual plane until they go on vacation. FAA-145s are specialists, with the big ones overhauling entire engines or top assembly landing gear. But many of them are smaller shops with a tight focus on items like cockpit instruments, lavatory equipment, or nothing more than coffee makers. There are even specialty shops for metal grinding, plating, and the silk-screening of lightplates.

FAA145s often have two legs to stand on: rotable repairs and parts sales. Shops heavily invested in parts sales may have warehouses 10X larger than their repair areas. Astute owners leverage their FAA-145 authority and knowledge against appropriate inventory for 10X the profits.

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All three of these maintenance operations hold FAA-145 certification, but some have bigger wrenches than others.

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