Diamond Aircraft's special mission aircraft division has announced that the PistonPower power-by-the-hour maintenance programme is now also available on Diamond's special mission aircraft line-up.

PistonPower's power-by-the-hour maintenance programme is an effective tool to keep direct operating costs under control and to bring stability into the maintenance budget. Diamond says that uncertainties while planning next year's budget are now things of the past. This is especially useful for governmental organisations as they often need to undergo a time consuming budget approval process. Once approved, every unexpected maintenance action may lead to unnecessarily long AOG times and shorten the aircraft's availability. Subscribing to PistonPower's power-by-the-hour maintenance programme will protect operators from unforeseen maintenance expenses, covering the aircraft from tip to tail, and thus reducing aircraft's downtime to a minimum.

“Working together with PistonPower forms the next big milestone in our special mission aircraft success story,” says David Datzreiter, sales manager special mission aircraft at Diamond Aircraft Industries. “The power-by-the-hour maintenance programme, now also available on our MPP variants, helps our clients to define a precise maintenance budget without any future surprises. It is even possible to have unscheduled maintenance events covered, ensuring the client lowest AOG times and a maximum of aircraft availability. This is especially of value for our African governmental clients, as there is no need to raise additional funds to keep their aircraft mission-ready, which can be a very time consuming process.”

Markus Fischer, director, special mission aircraft, adds: “Beside the importance of the actual running maintenance costs of a surveillance aircraft, the same level of significance should be paid to the cost coverage of the scheduled and unscheduled maintenance budget. The opportunity to control the costs and have a projectable budget is a big advantage to each operation, no matter to the organisation type. A two to three year secure and stable budget is the key to a successful, efficient and profitable operation. This insurance programme should be top priority to all aircraft operators.”

PistonPower VP of business development, Remi Szymanski states: “Our revolutionary piston maintenance programme will provide Austro-powered Diamond MPP (special mission) aircraft with a tremendous advantage in cost per hour of operation. Having the ability to budget your maintenance costs with confidence out to five years provides a tremendous advantage to MPP operators of new or already in service aircraft as all municipalities and government agencies need to comply with annual budget constraints and PistonPower will make this possible.”

PistonPower was created by the same group who formed the JSSI programme for turbine based aircraft and now provides a unique service that eliminates maintenance cost surprises. All scheduled and unscheduled maintenance is covered by a simple hourly fee and at TBO (or before if necessary) there are no additional costs to the customer. PistonPower provides flexible priced options for firewall forward or tip to tail coverage, tailored to clients' specific needs.