Stephen Maiden | President - Constant Aviation

If you were to ask me to pick one word to describe Stephen Maiden, president of Constant Aviation, I would choose the word “passion.” This month, D.O.M. magazine sat down with Maiden to learn about his career in aviation maintenance, how his passion for aviation has helped him be successful, and some of the lessons he has learned along his journey to where he is today.

An Early Passion for Aviation

Maiden tells D.O.M. magazine that he had a passion for airplanes as a kid. “As I grew up, I always had an intense passion for aviation,” he says. “I carried that passion throughout my early years. As I got older, I was able to make ties with some pilots and got some additional opportunities to learn about the industry throughout my high school years. I was fortunate to be near some airports and I took every opportunity to be around airplanes. There were also a lot of great of aviation movies as I was growing up. I just fell in love with the industry.”

Military Service

In high school, Maiden also had a passion to serve in the military when he graduated. “From my freshman year, I knew I was going to go into the military,” Maiden tells D.O.M. magazine. “It was just a matter of which branch. I checked all the branches out. As a sophomore and junior, I had no desire to go the college route. I had specific business goals even at that age, and I had an idea that I was going to serve in the military.”

As he progressed through his high school years, Maiden never took the ACT or SAT exams. His entire focus was on joining the military. He ended up selecting the Air Force. His parents both served in the Army and provided him guidance along the way. “I also had a great recruiter,” Maiden adds. “The recruiter was in aviation. I made it very clear that I wanted to work on airplanes.”

Maiden ended up signing up to be an electrical and environmental technician in the Air Force. He was eager to learn everything he could. “I graduated at the top of my class as an honor graduate from technical school,” he tells D.O.M. magazine. “To me it wasn’t really about graduating at the top of the class. I just loved what I was doing. I loved learning about everything.”

After technical school, he was stationed at Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, SC, where he worked on F-16s and A-10s. He took every opportunity to learn as much as he could about the systems on which he worked. Almost immediately, an opportunity came up to travel overseas.

Life-Changing Event

Maiden went to Saudi Arabia. There was a bombing at the Khobar Towers while Maiden was there in 1996,. “I was given a purple heart because of the injuries sustained in the bombing. Not very many people know that. I was about 200 yards from the explosion. It was a life-changing event for me and I rarely talk about it. That event took all of the passion and excitement I had for being in the industry at a young age and refocused it. You never know when it’s going to end. At that point in time, I became extremely focused on what I wanted to do from a career perspective. It was a tragic, sad and humbling event. But as I look back to that bombing, it was definitely a turning point in my career.”

Before the Khobar Towers bombing, Maiden had been goal oriented, setting goals and making plans on how to achieve them. After the bombing, with a new outlook on life and his future career, he started making more concise long-term goals. He wanted to get on the management side of aviation maintenance. He started to focus on that goal, taking advantage of every learning opportunity the Air Force offered. He hung out with avionics technicians to learn more about the avionics systems. He borrowed their technical training manuals and studied the coursework. He obtained his FCC license. Maiden was like a sponge – soaking up as much information as he could to help prepare him for life after the military.

Life After the Military

When Maiden got out of the Air Force in the late 1990s, he thought the general aviation environment would embrace his military background and that he would be able to find a job that utilized his knowledge and experience quickly. He was on a high note when he got out of the Air Force. “The military offered me growth,” he says. “I had a lot of responsibility at a young age. I had a career path in the military, and after four and a half years, I felt I had a great deal of responsibility and would be able to carry that forward in the general aviation side of the business.”

Maiden says that was the furthest thing from the truth. “I left what had been the pinnacle of my career to probably one of the lowest points in my career – the realization that nobody wanted to hire me,” he says. “There wasn’t a great transition opportunity for me leaving the military and joining the general aviation side of the industry.”

Maiden says that he took jobs at several factories. He went from job to job, simultaneously trying to find a job in aviation. “I struggled with that,” Maiden tells D.O.M. magazine. “I was very motivated to get into the aviation sector. I was living in a suburb of Cleveland, and unfortunately there weren’t a whole lot of aviation opportunities back then.”

Maiden was so desperate to get into aviation that he tried a non-conventional way to get his foot in the door. “I told several companies that I would work for free for a period of 90 days,” he says. “I told them I would clean the hangar floors, run parts, collect data, work on airplanes or anything they needed me to do. At the end of 90 days, if they wanted to hire me, they could pay me whatever they wanted – even minimum wage. At that point it wasn’t about the money; it was about getting an aviation job!”

Companies didn’t take him up on his offer. Sixty days after getting out of the Air Force, he still wasn’t working in aviation. He was starting to think he would have to re-enlist in the military to continue working in aviation – something he didn’t really want to do. After all, his goal was to make it in general aviation.

In a last-ditch effort, Maiden contacted a friend he had made in the military and who was working for Bombardier in Wichita, KS. He explained his difficulty landing an aviation job. His friend said, “Let me make some calls and see what I can do.”

That was on a Thursday. The next day, on a Friday, his friend called him and asked, “Can you start on Monday?”

The next day, Maiden packed up his Blazer, left his family in Cleveland and drove to Wichita where he started working at Bombardier that Monday.

Getting Experience

Maiden’s main objective for working in Wichita was to get some experience so he could beef up his resume. He wanted to use that experience to help him land an aviation job back in the Cleveland area. He lived frugally, working as many hours as he could to support himself and his family back home. “I lived in a very small, run-down inn,” he shares. “I worked as much as possible and took advantage of every learning opportunity I could.”

Not a Minute Wasted

Maiden was working hard and learning as much as he could at Bombardier. At the same time, he took advantage of his lunch break to further his career goals. Maiden says he has always been a fanatic about being organized, taking detailed notes and planning out each day. What he would do during his lunch break each day was no exception. Instead of going out for lunch, he would use that time to reach out to aviation companies in the Cleveland area. “I researched every general aviation company within a state of Ohio,” Maiden tells D.O.M. magazine. “I got the contact information for every company on the western side of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan. Every lunch break, I would call at least three of those companies. I did that for two months. I would introduce myself and say I was looking for a job. Yes, I was the squeaky wheel.”

Maiden’s perseverance paid off. He eventually got a job in Cleveland as an avionics technician at a Part 145 repair

station at Cleveland Hopkins airport. It was a pay cut, but Maiden says that didn’t matter. He says that is when his professional career officially took off.

An Avionics Technician

Maiden was doing avionics installations and repairs at the new job, but he says this was just a step towards his ultimate goal. “Every step that I had taken in my career all the way back to the bombing at Khobar Towers, I always had a passion and a goal for exactly what I was working towards,” Maiden shares. “Back then, there was a large aviation company at a local airport called Corporate Wings. I wanted to work there. Oddly, that was one of the companies I had offered to work for free when I was desperate to get into aviation before moving to Wichita. They called out of the blue one day. ‘We are adding some people here,’ they said. ‘We know that you were calling us non-stop a while back. Why don’t you come over for an interview?’ I ended up getting the job.”

Corporate Wings

Maiden says that at the time he didn’t realize just how lucky he was to land that job at Corporate Wings. “I joined the organization when it was small,” he shares. “I was the 21st maintenance employee in the organization. Six months later, Flight Options was created as a sister company, and a lot of the original Corporate Wings employees including myself had an opportunity to be a part of Flight Options, the fastest-growing fractional company at the time and the second largest behind NetJets. I was fortunate to be a part of that fast-growing company. I got in on the ground level and had an opportunity to grow with the company.”

At Flight Options, Maiden got promoted to increasing levels of responsibility, from avionics supervisor to avionics manager. He also expanded his knowledge of what was going on in all the departments in the company. “I never looked at a position as confined to the strict four walls of my job,” he says. “I never said, ‘If I am the avionics manager, I can only worry about the avionics department.’ I took the opportunity to learn and be a part of other parts of the organization. That was a culture that was bred by Kenn Ricci, one of the owners. I involved myself in the operations and the quality side of the organization. Every time that was a special opportunity for a project, I always volunteered to take it on. Each of those opportunities provided me a learning experience and the opportunity to learn the business side of aviation.”

Mentors

Ricci and Mike Rossi were the primary owners of Corporate Wings and Flight Options. Maiden says that Ricci and Rossi provided him exposure to different areas of aviation. “They saw I was passionate and was a hard worker, and was committed to growing professionally,” Maiden says. “They were passionate about the business and helped me grow in my professional career. I learned a lot about the business side of the industry. I learned what it meant to be a good leader from them.”

(Editor’s note: Ricci published a book, Management by Trust, which makes the case that treating employees in an open and trusting manner is imperative to succeeding in business in the 21st century. For more information visit www.managementbytrust.com.)

“I had a great career at Flight Options,” Maiden shares. “I was given a great opportunity. I had the benefit of learning from multiple mentor during my tenure at Flight Options. Many of those mentors ore still great friends of mine. The knowledge they taught me allowed me to grow professionally. After eight years, I left to take an opportunity to be the vice president at Constant Aviation.”

Constant Aviation

When Maiden joined Constant Aviation in 2006, it was a small company that had been founded the year before with one facility at the Cleveland Hopkins airport. Soon after, the company acquired another facility in Birmingham, AL. Maiden says that was the start of the growth from what was a small company to the significant MRO it is today.

After a year and a half as vice president, Maiden was promoted to president. As president, Maiden focused on fostering a positive work culture. “I am extremely proud of the culture that our organization has,” Maiden stresses. “There is a tremendous amount of passion for our brand, our growth and our customers. We have built this organization on its culture.

“Some people use buzzwords and say, ‘We focus on the customer,’ or, ‘We focus on quality,’” Maiden adds. “But because of my personality and the passion I had to get where I am today, I have very high expectations. I want the people we hire to truly care. You can be the most technically-savvy individual, but if you don’t care, the organization will fail. We are extremely focused on hiring the right people to grow the company. I am looking for people that care. That has driven our culture. We have a great group of employees that truly care. That caring attitude translates to caring about the customer and caring about quality. Caring is the single most important trait to have in employees.”

Helping Employees Grow

Maiden is passionate about helping his employees grow. “I think we have given our team members opportunities similar to the opportunities I have had,” Maiden tells D.O.M. magazine. “If you are passionate and aggressive, you will have opportunities to grow here at Constant Aviation. Everybody should have their own goals. As a company, we need to understand our employees’ goals so we give them opportunities to meet those goals. We need to be very active in understanding what the individual growth opportunities are for each team member and make sure we guide them down the right path and mentor them.”

Maiden says that there are three fundamental principles that the company focuses on in every aspect of the business. They are:

1.“Fanatical attention to detail in all that we do.”

2.“We take a long-term approach to relationships and partnerships, both internal and external. For example, if we have a vendor that we partner with, we won’t take shortcuts. Just because someone is cheaper, we won’t move business for short-term gains or results. Those long-term relationships and partnerships will take you farther in the long term. We take the same approach with our employees – our team members. This leads to the third and most important principle.”

3.“The employees are the foundation of a service company. Our company provides a service. In the MRO world, you make and generate money by providing a service. Our service is we are either working on an airplane, working on a component that goes on an airplane, or we are selling parts that go on an airplane. All of our departments have customers. We have to provide great service. In order to do that, you better have people who care. It doesn’t matter who’s at the top. It really matters who’s at the bottom!”

By now you should be able to see why I would choose the word “passion” to describe Maiden.

He offers us a closing thought. “I am extremely passionate about our brand and our company and what we are doing here at Constant Aviation,” he says. “At the same time, I don’t think that happens by accident. I am a firm believer that the harder you work, the luckier you get. There is going to be a new generation of leaders coming up the ranks as more people retire over the next 10 years or so. We need to make sure that the next generation understands the importance of working hard and being passionate about what they do.” 

As a daily reminder that hard work leads to opportunities, Maiden has this frame in his office. The pages of notes were those that he kept on the aviation companies he called on a rotating basis. As a daily reminder that hard work leads to opportunities, Maiden has this frame in his office. The pages of notes were those that he kept on the aviation companies he called on a rotating basis.