Has anyone else had a similar problem? The mechanic said the plane was
started and running after annual, so is this just a major coincidence?
Is it true??? Are we all just test pilots, when we pick our planes up
from an annual?

The reason aircraft maintenance costs so much more than automotive
maintenance is because the increased risks of serious injury and even
death require a different approach. All maintenance is done under the
supervision of specially certified personnel, using only approved
procedures and parts of the highest quality due to stringent design
approval and quality control. All this results in a much lower error
rate than automotive maintenance. And if you believe that, I've got a
bridge to sell you.

Maybe it really works that way in the airline and high end (meaning
turbine) corporate and charter world. I don't know. But the reality
of maintenance when it comes to privately owned piston pounders is very
different.

Aviation parts are low quality and high cost, the airplanes themselves
seem to be designed to make things difficult for the fabricator and
impossible for the serviceman (remember that the FAA must approve the
design), the processes used to repair are antiquated (I believe we're
the last industry left to repair using oxyacetylene welding), the
mechanics generally undertrained and underpaid (the auto dealership
pays more, so where do you think the good ones go?), and when you drop
the plane off at the shop, you take your chances. You are a test
pilot. As a general rule, a plane will come out of annual with more
things wrong then when it went in. Why? Because you won't pay to have
it done any differently.

How much was wrong on your $1900 annual on your C-172? Was anything
repaired? Parts replaced?

If I was going to annual your airplane the way I annual mine (meaning
check everything I believe should be checked, lube everything that
needs to be lubed, and not just do the required minimum), and I was
going to charge you the standard labor rate the local auto dealership
charges, I would need to charge you about that much just for the basic
inspection and routine maintenance - and that's assuming I worked as
fast as someone who does it all the time. Anything wrong would be on
top of that.

There used to be a local shop in my area that worked that way. I would
get into a plane they released from annual and just launch, without any
worry. A basic annual on a Bonanza was $5000 - any repairs were
additional. It was started by a former airline president who had
several airplanes and who wanted everything done RIGHT, cost no object.
He discovered there was nowhere he could go to have it done that way.
When he died, he left the shop to the head mechanic free and clear.
The mechanic still couldn't make a go of it. Why not? A friend of
mine took a cowling there to be repaired. The repair cost as much as
the rest of his (admittedly owner-assisted) annual put together. Hard
to keep customers that way.

The unpleasant reality is that the average annual on a simple
fixed-gear fixed-pitch 30 year old airplane is really about a 25 hour
process if you don't have to stop and fix anything significant. Yes, I
know the book says otherwise - but if you do it by the book, you will
miss stuff and make mistakes. At $1900, that works out to $76/hr,
before you consider parts. The local Chevy dealer charges more.

Now realize that most of this work requires only minimal skill - you
could easily do it yourself if you wanted to, even legally. But if
you're going to pay a pro to do it, he has to charge you the same rate
for unscrewing panels and removing seats that he charges you to
internally time a magneto or repair an exhaust crack.

Most people who are not going to do their own automotive maintenance
wouldn't even consider buying a car that was more than 10 years old.
They buy new or relatively late-model used, even though the savings on
purchase price are quite substantial (a factor of 5-10). They do this
because they know the maintenance will eat them alive, or they won't
have anything resembling reliable transportation. The same equation
applies to airplanes - only most owners simply can't afford new. The
result - high maintenance costs and reliability problems.

Michael