Introduction and Background

Kitze Aviation is an FBO owned and operated by Doug Kitze. FBO stands for fixed based operator. An FBO by definition from the Federal Aviation Administration is required to be certain things. These things include a flight school, aircraft for rent, a pilot shop and sell aviation fuel. Kitze Aviation does all of these things plus has a maintenance department where all of the rental planes are serviced. Kitze Aviation is located in Canton Michigan on the field of Mettetal Airport. Mettetal Airport is a small general aviation airport with one runway going north and south. On the field at Mettetal Airport there are approximately three hundred privately owned airplanes.

There are many different types of people who spend time at Kitze Aviation. There are the employees that range from office personnel to maintenance people to certified flight instructors to line guys (otherwise known as "ramp rats" in the industry). Another division of people at Kitze is the student pilots who are taking lessons in the rental planes Kitze provides. Last but not least, the most entertaining group of people, know as the "flying fossils." This group of people consists of about ten retirees that are were pilots that spend the better part of every day hanging out at the airport sharing their stories to whomever may be inclined to listen.

Within the Culture of people that are at Kitze Aviation, we need to look closer at a certain group of people to understand the context that will be described later in the report. Taking a look at the people who actually rent the airplanes at Kitze Aviation. These people are vastly different in personality, however most of them share a few common elements. The plane renters are generally pilots with relatively low hours as pilot in command of an airplane and have not learned to take care of airplanes properly. In general this means that the experience level is low and the confidence level is higher than it should be. The saying with in the aviation industry proves itself all too often. It goes like this "There are old pilots and there are bold pilots. However there are no old, bold pilots." So we have established that the experience level of these pilots is low. As with automobiles, low levels of experience mean more damage to the equipment. The method of reporting this damage is the focus for this report.

The Goals of Kitze Aviation: Focusing on the flight school and aircraft rental

The goals of the flight school and aircraft rental departments of Kitze Aviation is to provide reasonably priced reliable airplanes in which students and pilots can access and fulfill their love of flying.

The first document that is used in the course of a flight is the paper schedule in which the pilot signs out a plane for a particular time slot. This pad is located on the counter in the FBO. My job is to look at the names on the schedule and look up those names on our currency list. This is a paper document that has every pilot listed who is eligible to fly our aircraft. To be eligible to fly the pilot has to be checked out by a flight instructor and also has to have flown our planes within the last ninety days. We also have to have a completed file on the pilot that includes a current medical certificate, a pilot’s license, and a signed rental agreement that explains the insurance and rental procedures.

Once I have certified that those requirements are met I am authorized to give the pilot the keys to the airplane and the clipboard that goes with the airplane. On the clipboard that is specific to each airplane there are a series of documents. These documents include the aircraft checklist that the pilot uses to perform preflight checks and in-flight operations. The next is the Hobbs card that is used to record the time that the pilot rents the plane for. The pilot is charged for the amount of time the engine is running. The meter that records that time is in the aircraft and is called a Hobbs meter. I write what the Hobbs time is when the aircraft started at and the pilot records the time that the Hobbs meter reads at the end of the flight. The final document on the clipboard is the "SQUAK" card. This card that will be explained in detail later is used for documenting any problem with the airplane.

These documents are effective in this setting because of a good group of people is in tune with the operations of Kitze Aviation. There are areas were a better system of checks and balances are required. However on the whole, the integrity of the workers and pilots is very high.

The system of the documents is very cumbersome and redundant. There are ways to make life easier and more efficient. The use of multitask documents could reduce the need for office workers to go to three different places to check a pilot’s currency for example. However this redundancy also serves a purpose. If one area is overlooked and not updated properly than there is usually somewhere else you can go to find the information that is needed. The biggest problem with the system of documents used is that it is very susceptible to human error. Even though the people are very contentious and good at their jobs, there is always the possibility of making mistakes.

Genre Analysis

The Genre: Defined, Described, and Usage Explained

The "SQUAK" card is a document that is used for recording any problem with the aircraft. This is a pink card approximately four inches wide by six inches long. The document is pink to make it stand out from all other documents. It is the only pink document used at Kitze Aviation. At the top of the card the word "SQUAK" is written. Under that there is a line for the name of the pilot writing up the problem. The name is required so that if there is a question or a need for clarification they can be contacted. Without knowing who filled out the card the problem could go unfixed. Next under the pilot’s name is an area where the problem is to be decried in as much depth as possible.

As described earlier, the "SQUAK" card is handed out with the clipboard to the pilot before each flight. When a pilot finds a problem with the airplane (either during the pre-flight procedure or in-flight), the pilot hand writes the problem on the card in ink. The pilot is to use ink just in case someone down the line decides they would like to change the problem to make it go away. Once the pilot fills out the card they hand it to the office worker. The office worker then hands it to his line guy and tells them to take it to maintenance. The line guy takes the ‘SQUAK" card to maintenance and hands it directly to the nearest maintenance worker. From there the maintenance worker accesses the problem. Then the problem is fixed if necessary and recorded in the aircraft logbook.

The "SQUAK" card is effective under most circumstances because the people who handle it are reliable. This document has so much importance that this is one of the areas I believe there are more check and balances needed. This document could literally be the difference between life and death to a pilot. As long as everyone in the process does there jobs the document work effectively as it is. However there is room for error or corruption to drastically reduce the effectiveness of the document

There are a lot of areas where this document could fail. This document travels from one person to the next with no documentation of the document changing hands. If the either the office worker or the line guy get distracted or busy the document may never get into the hands of maintenance. The worst possible case is that a maintenance worker could be having a bad day and make the "SQUAK" card disappear. Until the problem gets fixed there is no record that the "SQUAK" card ever existed. I have a personal experience with this happening to me. Before I worked at Kitze I was flying one of the airplanes and as I landed I lost the brake on the right main tire of the landing gear. So I went through the procedure to document the problem only to have the maintenance worker tear up the "SQUAK" card in front of my face because he didn’t believe that I knew what I was talking about. This particular maintenance worker no longer works at Kitze or anywhere else in the industry (thanks to my contacts at the FAA that pulled his license to perform aircraft maintenance) but it shows that this is a possible problem that needs to be addressed. It is my recommendation that a formal set of checks and balances be put into place to avoid possible problems in the future.