Jon Robbins - Aviation Officer II, Helicopter Maintenance | Cal Fire
By Joe Escobar - The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) answers the call to more than 300,000 incidents each year. It is responsible for fire and emergency response on more than 31 million acres of privately owned wild lands in California. It also assists federal or local governments when requested. Heading up the helicopter maintenance division of CAL FIRE is AviationOfficer Jon Robbins, an A&P/IA who has been working in the helicopter industry since 1980. Robbins is also a volunteer member of HeliMx magazine’s editorial advisory board. This month D.O.M.sat down with Robbins to learn how he got in helicopter maintenance and understand some of the management lessons he has learned over the years.
Formal Education
We often hear from successful managers that continuing education is an important key to success. The same goes for Robbins. He has bachelor’s and master’s degrees and was working on his Ph.D. before he started his career in helicopter maintenance. We asked Robbins how his formal education and his time spent as a teaching assistant while seeking his Ph.D. has helped him in his helicopter maintenance career. “It gave me a real sense that you never want to get up in front of people or have a conversation with somebody if you don’t know what you are talking about,” he says. “And if you don’t know what you are talking about, you have an obligation to acknowledge that. Those kinds of teaching experiences and research opportunities helped get me to the point where I can be comfortable saying, ‘I don’t know the answer to that, but I sure know how to find it.’ For me that is very important. I am not somebody who is in favor of someone buckling down and trying to figure out an answer on their own when there are time factors involved and there are people who know the answers to the questions they are looking for.”
And what degrees does Robbins hold? Aviation Management? Aeronautical Engineering? Not quite — he has a B.A. in Biology from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA and a M.Sc. in Oceanography from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He was also a Ph.D. candidate in Marine Science at the University of California, Santa Cruz before leaving the program in good standing to obtain his A&P at Gavilan College in Gilroy, CA.
The Transition to Aviation Maintenance
So, how does someone who is a Ph.D. candidate in Marine Science become a helicopter mechanic? Robbins tells us his first introduction to aviation was just after he graduated from Hampshire College. With a little help from his parents, he was able to take flying lessons and get his private pilot’s certificate. Although he enjoyed flying, he had no desire to get into aviation at the time.
Robbins moved his family to Halifax, Nova Scotia to pursue his Masters degree. Once he got his degree, his wife wanted to move to California. A friend of theirs at the University who was a Geophysicist getting her Ph.D. had grown up in Santa Cruz and told Jon and his wife about the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). It turns out UCSC had a good Oceanography program. After getting accepted for the graduate school at UCSC, Robbins moved to California where he would pursue a Ph.D. in Oceanography and work as a teaching assistant.
In the meantime, Robbins’ wife landed a job at the Watsonville airport as the airport attendant. One of the people she met at the airport was Sean Tucker. Robbins and his wife became good friends with Tucker. Tucker had gotten a job flying for a crop dusting company in Watsonville and eventually worked his way into helicopters. Around the time Tucker got his helicopter rating, Robbins was becoming disillusioned with graduate school and what he would do after he got his degree. “For a variety of reasons, I had decided that I really wanted to do something else; having a trade was very appealing to me,” Robbins tells D.O.M. magazine.
One day Tucker walked up to Robbins holding a copy of a helicopter trade publication. “Hey look,” he told Robbins, “If you get you’re A&P and do well in school, maybe you can get a helicopter scholarship to go to a factory school.” “I started thinking about it,” says Robbins. “I had always been a ‘hands-on’ person. I decided I wanted to get my A&P. There was an A&P school in Hollister which is not far from Watsonville. I did well enough in school that I got one of the scholarships. I went Texas and took the AS350 AStar D model helicopter maintenance course at what was then Aerospatiale (now Eurocopter).”
The factory school gave Robbins his first helicopter experience, which helped land him his first helicopter maintenance job. That was 1980.
The Rotor Works
Robbins’ first job was at The Rotor Works — a small company in Hayward, CA that had two S-58Ts. “We did lift work and seismic exploration,” says Robbins. “We did lift jobs all over California. There was always something new every day. I really enjoyed the job. That was what really cemented me in the helicopter world.”
We asked Robbins if he had any regrets getting into aviation maintenance. “Absolutely not,” he replied. “It wasn’t at all what I expected, and there were no regrets at all. I got to work in some cool places at The Rotor Works. I have met some real characters over the years that I will remember forever.”
After a few years at The Rotor Works, Robbins and his wife decided they wanted to move back East. He was able to get a job as a helicopter mechanic for a flight school in Sterling, MA where he worked until a job as a maintenance planner came open at Precision Airlines in Manchester, NH. Shortly thereafter he landed a job at New Hampshire Helicopters, Inc. in Hampton, NH. He worked there for several years as a chief inspector and director of maintenance.
That first management experience
The job at New Hampshire Helicopters was Robbins’ first job as a DOM. We asked him what he learned making the transition from being a mechanic to working in a management position. “You need to make a shift between somebody who looks to others to provide you with the things that you need to do your job like parts and technical support — somebody that is on the receiving end of that — to being somebody that is on the giving side of that. When somebody comes to you with a technical problem, it becomes your job to help find a solution.
“In a way, it’s sort of a sad day when you realize that your hands might hurt the next day if you go out and work on a helicopter because you haven’t done that for a while,” he continues. “Every now and then I sort of envy a mechanic who is up to their knuckles working on a difficult task, and I am just watching in the background.”
Robbins eventually moved back to California where he worked at several companies including working for DynCorp International as a mechanic on the CAL FIRE helicopters and then as a base mechanic for CAL STAR at its Vacaville, CA helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS) facility. He even started his own business along the way, West Valley Aviation, which offers dynamic balancing of rotors, shafts and propellers. He landed his current job at CAL FIRE in 2009. “I really enjoy working here,” he shares. “I couldn’t think of a job I would want more.”
We asked Robbins if he felt having a pilot’s certificate has helped him in his career as a helicopter mechanic. “I think flying in general, whether it’s airplanes or helicopters, has to make you more sympathetic to maintenance issues that come up in the operation of the aircraft,” he says. “One of the things that I have always felt is to always remember who the customer is. I look at the pilots and the firefighters who fly in our helicopters as customers. They deserve their expectations to be met, which at the end of the day is a helicopter that is going to get them to the fire and back and allow them to get their job done.”
We asked Robbins what he thinks has been a key to success in the helicopter maintenance industry. “First off, I guess I would have to say being humble,” he says. “There are times when I think I’m not up to a particular task, but most often there are people I have access to that can help me do what I need to do. It’s the realization that teamwork is what it is all about. If you can somehow inspire people to do the best that they are capable of, that is pretty much success in my book.”
Robbins is quick to point out that his success is dependent on the success of the team he works with. “We have a solid leadership team here. There are three programs here at CAL FIRE. I take care of the helicopter maintenance. Tony Agosto is my counterpart who supervises the S-2T tanker program. And our OV-10 manager is Russell Knight. Bill Mason manages our special projects and handles training. We all report to Marty Buno, who is the chief of maintenance for the Aviation Management Unit. We all work under the supervision of Chief Bill Payne, who is the Senior Aviation Officer for CAL FIRE.”
We asked Robbins what he considered his management style to be. “My attitude towards everybody that is on my crew is that I am here to make it easier for them to do their jobs; to make sure they have the tools, parts, and support — both moral and logistic — to do the job that we are tasked to do,” he answered. “I didn’t think of myself as a facilitator when took this job, but that is what it is. I am completely happy with that. When the program does well and we have helicopters that get to the fire and back safely, everybody appreciates that.”
What advice he would Robbins give to a student just entering aviation maintenance for success in their career? “If you want to work in helicopter maintenance, you need to somehow get your foot in the door and get experience at a helicopter operation. You need to convince the company you really want to work on helicopters. Having a great attitude helps, whether you are working on fixed-wing or helicopters. I tell people all the time that it is far easier to train somebody with little experience who is really motivated and has a positive attitude than it is to train somebody with a lot of experience and a poor attitude.”
It is evident that motivation and positive attitudes help the CAL FIRE team successfully complete their hundreds of thousands of missions each year!