You may have heard the saying that insurance is one of the few purchases you make in life where you hope you never have to use it. What you are purchasing, in reality, is peace of mind. The same can be said about aircraft maintenance service programs, except there are occasions where you know you will use it, such as a hot section inspection. These are active maintenance protection policies that have similarities to insurance, but are also very different. In the end, they give you peace of mind from a catastrophic event or a large, expensive inspection. By dividing the costs over all the users of the program, risk can be managed and expenses can be predictable.
How did maintenance programs come about? For this, we need to go back to the early 1980s when OEMs were trying to sell more aircraft and they faced the very real perception that aircraft are expensive to operate – much more than advertised. In order to do this, the OEMs modified already-existing programs they had for airlines and came up with the HCMP (Hourly Cost Maintenance Program) in order to guarantee hourly operating costs to private operators. The pool of users was initially small and the cost was viewed as expensive, but over time the cost per hour for these programs came down, and it became a routine way to operate aircraft. Today it is normal for an aircraft to have programs on engines, airframe, APU and sometimes even Avionics – all in an effort to minimize surprises and bring predictability to operating costs.
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