D.O.M. Blogs

I am writing this blog post from Anaheim, CA. Our team is exhibiting at the HAI HELI-EXPO 2014 conference. It has been a productive show for us, and I must say I am enjoying the weather – we won’t be getting this nice warm weather in Wisconsin until May!
Meetings and press conferences take up a lot of my time at conventions. Several times in the past two days, I had a company say, “Customer satisfaction is now a priority for us.”

As I was going through my emails today, a blog in one of the newsletters I subscribe to caught my attention. The title of it was Three Tips for Pain Free Performance Reviews, and it was written by Scott Eblin, an executive coach, speaker and author of The Next Level.

Annual performance reviews are a duty of most DOMs and maintenance managers. I have been through my share of them, both on the receiving end and on the evaluation side of it. If proper thought and planning are not part of performance reviews, they are worth as much as the paper they are written on.

I am typically a “Glass is half-full” kind of person. I try to see the good in situations. But flying on the airlines lately has caused me to look at things not in a “Glass is half-full” or “Glass is half-empty” way, but more in a “The glass is empty” way.

NBAA2013 is fast approaching. The staff of D.O.M. magazine is making final preparations for the largest business aviation trade show of the year.

I always enjoy NBAA. It is an opportunity to see what’s new in business aviation products and services and network with the business aviation community. It’s an opportunity to meet up with old friends and make new ones. It is a big learning opportunity.

In my editorial column A Level Playing Field in the June issue of D.O.M. magazine, I told the story of Nick, a repair station owner of an avionics repair station in the Oklahoma City area that felt forced to surrender his repair station because of the hassles his PAI was supposedly giving him. (You can click here to read that editorial if you haven’t already seen it.)

D.O.M. magazine is seeking nominations for its second annual Maintenance Manager of the Year and Above and Beyond awards.

The D.O.M. magazine staff introduced these awards in 2012 because it believed there isn't enough recognition for all the extra effort and professionalism that exists in our industry —in particular, there is not enough recognition for maintenance managers that deal with the day to day challenge of running an aviation maintenance department.

Many aviation management professionals will be in Fort Worth, TX April 30-May 2 attending the National Business Aviation Association Maintenance Management Conference (NBAA MMC). D.O.M. magazine will be exhibiting at the conference, and our publisher Greg Napert and I will both be there.

My wife works at a local school district. Last week, a group of teachers and administrative staff got together for an after-work social event.

I enjoyed spending the time walking around and talkng to different people. As I was talking to one teacher, the subject of the newly-hired school superintendent came up. Out of curiosity, I asked him, "Does someone have to be a teacher to be a superintendant?"

"I'm not sure, but I would guess so," he replied. "How can you lead a school district if you have never been a teacher yourself?

Litigation extortion. That is how I like to characterize the crazy litigious society we live in here in the United States. Some people are all too eager to sue the pants off of companies, raising the price of just about every product we buy as consumers. Those of us in aviation definitely feel the effects of litigation. Talk to just about any aircraft manufacturer or aviation product supplier. Chances are high they have faced lawsuits. It is one thing to file a legitimate lawsuit because of negligence. It is another thing to take advantage of the system to “stick it to the man.”