Steve Myers - President - Myers Aviation

Steve Myers is the president of Oshkosh, WI-based Myers Aviation. Myers and his team of mechanics perform maintenance and inspections on a variety of general aviation aircraft. The company specializes in working with insurance companies to recover, evaluate and repair damaged aircraft. This is Steve Myers’ story.

Steve Myers was born in Seattle, WA. He grew up in an aviation family. His dad and uncle both worked as technicians for Boeing. When Myers was three, his family moved to Pequot Lakes, MN and bought a farm. The family operated a dairy farm, where Myers says he learned what hard work was all about. One day, they decided they wanted an airport, so they built an airstrip with two runways on their land and started a flying club with two airplanes. His oldest brother got his pilot’s license in Minnesota, and took Steve up for his first flight. His dad began flight school when he was in Seattle, and finished up after moving to Pequot Lakes. Myers earned his pilots license when he was in high school. His younger brother is a private pilot, A&P/IA and works at Basler in Oshkosh. His youngest brother also got his A&P and worked at Northwest Airlines until the mechanics strike forced him to make a career change.

Career Choice

In high school, Myers didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do after he graduated. His aptitude tests showed he had high mechanical proficiency. So he thought he would be good as a mechanic. He wasn’t interested in being an automotive mechanic. He chose to work in aviation as an aircraft mechanic. Myers enrolled at Northland Community and Technical College in Thief River Falls, MN. Myers graduated from Northland in 1977 with his A&P certificate.

The First Job

Myers says that when he got out of school the airlines were hiring, but they wanted potential new hires to have five years of experience. General aviation was in a slump and there weren’t many jobs available. He saw a job posting at the school for an aircraft mechanic job at Oshkosh, WI-based Basler Flight Service. “I raced down here to Oshkosh, and was the lucky guy to get the job,” Myers says. “So unlike most of my friends, I had a job right out of school.”

Myers worked on the general aviation aircraft at Basler. He did maintenance and 100-hour inspections for customers’ aircraft and also worked on the aircraft at Basler’s flight school. He also worked on rebuilding crashed aircraft that Basler worked on.

Rebuilding a Crashed Aircraft

Every now and then, Myers would travel with the DOM to inspect a damaged aircraft. “I would look at an aircraft that was totaled out and think, ‘I could fix this airplane!’ I really wanted an airplane to fly. I couldn’t afford to buy one, but I could afford to get one and fix it.”

Myers bought a 1968 Cardinal that had run out of gas and crashed in Oshkosh. He repaired it and flew it for many years. “I really enjoyed doing it,” he says. “It was a lot of fun, and I couldn’t get enough of it.”

Becoming DOM

In 1980, Myers became the director of maintenance. “I became the DOM by default because of an unfortunate event,” Myers shares. “Three of our mechanics were killed in an aircraft accident. One of them was the director of maintenance.”

Myers says he was prepared for his role as DOM. “I was ready to go,” he says. “I had been thinking of starting my own company, so being the director of maintenance was a good deal – I was able to get that experience.”

For quite a few years, Myers had been repairing aircraft on his own. He had obtained his inspection authorization, and was doing a lot of work on the side. “I would buy aircraft, rebuild them, and turn around and sell them,” he says. “Between my job at Basler and my side jobs, I was working from around 7:00 in the morning to midnight most days – I was working around the clock.”

When Basler stopped doing repair work for insurance companies (for aircraft that had been in accidents), the insurance companies started to contact Myers and ask if he could help them. He decided it was time to start his own business full-time. That was the start of Myers Aviation.

Myers Aviation

When he first started Myers Aviation, he did all of the work himself, using some part-time mechanics as needed. After a year, he hired two mechanics full-time. Business continued to grow, and his wife eventually quit her job and took over all of the accounting and paperwork functions for the company. Now, he has a total of 10 mechanics working for him.

Myers Aviation also does maintenance for general aviation aircraft. “We do about 30 annuals a year, plus a lot of routine maintenance,” Myers says. “The maintenance end of the business is around 30-35 percent of our work with the insurance projects taking up the rest.”

Employees

Since Myers Aviation works on a variety of general aviation aircraft and does major repairs to damaged aircraft, we asked Myers what types of skills his employees need to have. “Maybe I’ve been blessed with great employees,” he says. “Our highly-qualified employees make our business successful. I have guys who can do a variety of things. I have different employees who are good at different things. Lee is our sheet metal guy. Other guys are good at fabric work. We’ve done a Pitts Model 12, we just finished up a Pawnee, and are currently working on a Super Cub. It was the very last Super Cub built by Piper. The damage was pretty extensive. We are installing a new fuselage, gear, props and rebuilding the wings.”

Myers typically has several projects in work at any given time. Repair time varies depending on the damage. We asked Myers what kind of vision it takes to go out to a crashed aircraft and decide if it can be repaired. “You learn that pretty quickly,” he says. “You look at an airplane and figure out at what point the aircraft is going to be totaled. The biggest thing these days is going to be parts. If parts will add up to $50,000 and the aircraft is insured for $60,000 or $70,000 it probably going to be totaled out. Normally the insurance company will go up to 70 percent of the insured value. After that, they will total the airplane out.”

And what happens when an aircraft is totaled out? “The aircraft belongs to the insurance company,” Myers says. “The customer gets paid, less his deductible if he has one, and the airplane goes out on a bid system and it gets sold as salvage. That’s how I got my ’68 Cardinal.”

We asked Myers what he enjoys about the business. “Every day is something new,” he says. “For example, I bought an airplane in the bay of Green Bay. I kind of knew where it was, but I had to go find it and get it out of the bay. It was a 172 that had gone in the water. It ended up being more difficult than we thought, but we ended up recovering it. We travel all over the place to recover crashed aircraft for insurance companies. Each project is something new.”

A unique aspect of Myers Aviation is the fact that they don’t need to look for new business. The business comes to them. Myers Aviation is one of a handful of companies that insurance companies call when they have a crashed airplane. “I don’t need to go out and look for new projects. They come looking for me. Ever since I started this business, I haven’t had one slack moment. We are always swamped with work!”