Prioritize!

I was awoken rudely today for the second time this week. My friend had a flat tire. This tire had a bubble on it since at least a week ago. I know because she told me so. I always sleep as much as I can before getting up for work, and was about to get up anyway for work. The problem is that after a shower, and morning traffic, there isn't enough time left to change a tire for someone. Luckily a local motorcycle cop helped her change it so i could go on to work. I saw the tire later. It literally exploded. She was lucky.

The first time was on Monday. It was her battery. I didn't have to be at work until noon, and as you know... I love to sleep! And I since I'm not a morning person, I hate to be bothered in the morning! So, I put some clothes on, and went down to her car to jump the battery. As I did this, I gave her a lecture about how I could still be in bed if she had followed my advice and had her battery tested at Autozone- for FREE! I knew it was going out because she asked me to look at her car the week before. Do you see a trend yet? After jumping her car, she had no choice but to drive to work, where it sat all day, only to require another jump for the ride home.

Maintenance just adds up and usually requires action all at once-unless you're keeping up with it. I had just started working at a flight school, when I noticed a crack on the nose cone, near the propeller. I don't know if the other instructors noticed it, and ignored it, or if I was the first to notice it. After I reported it, the owner decided to not order a new one right away, so the mechanic put a screw in it to prevent the cone from peeling away due to centrifugal force. The aircraft was an older model, so there was only one nose cone left at the manufacturer's warehouse. The screw did not hold, and the nosecone peeled away from the hub after only one flight. Unfortunately, the surplus nose cone from the manufacturer was no longer available. A custom built one for a few hundred dollars more was required. The brakes were also shot, requiring new rotors and pads. It was then that I found out that the mechanic told the owner that the rotors were shot only a month before, and they should be changed with the pads, or the pads would not last. He was right. Those pads did not last a month. When you think about it, how much do you use brakes in an aircraft? A one mile taxi to the runway? A one mile taxi to the hanger after landing? When was the last time you changed the pads on your car? 500,000 miles? They are made to last. Waiting on maintenance for 'financial reasons' doesn't make sense. You will pay through costly preventable maintenance, fines, or your life later.