Because hiring Savvy to manage your maintenance will improve the quality of your maintenance, while relieving you of the hassle of managing your own maintenance, and very likely saving you thousands of dollars year after year. We love working with top-notch mechanics and shops, and most of them love working with us. No single shop or mechanic, no matter how terrific, can offer the expertise and experience of Savvy’s technical team.

In addition, Savvy can be a godsend when you face an aircraft owner’s worst maintenance nightmare: a mechanical problem away from home. Instead of having to deal with unfamiliar shops and mechanics, you simply contact your Savvy account manager and he handles everything for you. He’ll ensure the problem is diagnosed properly, that it is repaired in the most cost-efficient fashion, and that the charges are fair and reasonable. That kind of peace of mind is priceless!

Absolutely. We have managed the maintenance of aircraft located in United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Israel, South Africa, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and Canada. Some of these aircraft are N-registered, others are registered with the local Civil Aviation Authority. Some are under full-service SavvyMx management, but most owners opt for SavvyQA consulting where the owner handles the interface with the maintenance providers.

We have much more regulatory latitude—and much more influence on your maintenance outcomes—if the aircraft is N-registered and its maintenance falls under the U.S. FARs. Most other national CAAs are much more restrictive in their maintenance regulations in ways that significantly restrict our radius of action. In our experience, it is highly beneficial for owners to maintain their aircraft in N-registry (typically by maintaining ownership of the aircraft in a U.S. entity) where that can be done legally. We have assisted some of our clients to establish U.S. entities for this purpose so that their overseas-based aircraft could be maintained in N-registry and maintained under FAA regulations.

To provide full-service management, we require that the aircraft be maintained in shops staffed by mechanics who can communicate with us fluently in English via our online ticket system. In situations where this is not practical, we typically recommend our SavvyQA consulting service and have the owner interface with the shop.

Generally not. However, for aircraft under Savvy management, we do manage repairs of gear-up landing damage, prop strikes, and other accidental damage covered by insurance.

Major repairs of this sort are not covered by Savvy’s standard annual management fee. We charge a modest supplemental flat-rate fee for managing the upgrade. Such fees generally vary between 50% and 100% of our standard annual management fee for the class of aircraft involved.

Not usually, although we have made some exceptions for some Van’s RV-series aircraft. SavvyMx is intended mainly for aircraft that have standard airworthiness certificates. For most owners of experimentals, our SavvyQA consulting program is a better fit. If you would like to discuss the possibility of placing your experimental amateur-built aircraft under the SavvyMx program, please contact us and we’ll be glad to consider your aircraft on a case-by-case basis.

Generally not. Savvy reserves the right to decline to manage the maintenance of any aircraft manufactured prior to 1970, although we’re somewhat flexible. We evaluate older aircraft on a case-by-case basis, to determine whether or not we feel the aircraft still has reasonable factory support and parts availability. For example, we will sometimes accept a 60s-vintage Bonanza or Cessna or Piper because those aircraft are still well-supported by the manufacturer and most parts are still readily available. When in doubt, please contact us for a determination before you sign up.

(EAA presently defines aircraft built before 1945 as “antique,” from 1945 to 1955 as “classic,” and from 1956 and 1971 as “contemporary.” EAA updates these definitions from time to time.)

Savvy has to be very careful with respect to protection from liability, given the extremely litigious nature of today’s aviation maintenance environment. Savvy  carries its own aviation comprehensive general liability (ACGL) insurance. Savvy’s service agreement with its clients also includes a mutual hold-harmless clause.

In addition, Savvy also requires that every client add Savvy as an “additional insured” to their aircraft liability policy each aircraft under management. We require this for two reasons:

• In the event that the client is sued and Savvy  is named as a co-defendant, we want to be sure that the client’s insurer provides a common defense for both the client and Savvy. The defense can be common since the client and Savvy have signed a bilateral hold-harmless and consequently have coincident interests. Therefore, the incremental cost to the insurance company is negligible.
• In the event that the client’s aircraft is damaged and the client makes an insurance claim to cover the cost of repairs, we want to minimize the likelihood that the client’s insurer will bring a subrogation action against Savvy to recover those costs.

Having Savvy added to the client’s aircraft liability policy as an additional insured accomplishes these objectives. In our experience, virtually every insurance company that insures GA aircraft is willing to do this. Most major GA underwriters do this at no additional premium, since underwriters realize that Savvy’s professional maintenance management actually lowers their risk of having a claim. (A few underwriters charge a small additional “nuisance fee,” generally $100 or less.)

Note that Savvy carries its own $5 million Aviation Comprehensive General Liability (ACGL) policy which provides Savvy primary coverage in the event of a liability judgment, so the likelihood of any dilution of your liability coverage limits is extremely small.

Savvy’s requirement to be added to your aircraft insurance as an additional insured is really no different than when an aircraft owner takes flight training from BPPP or CPPP or FlightSafety or SimCom, and the training organization requires that it be added to the owner’s policy as an additional insured.

NOTE: The requirement that Savvy be added to the aircraft’s insurance as an “additional insured” applies only to aircraft enrolled in our full-service SavvyMx managed maintenance program. It does not apply to aircraft enrolled in our other services (SavvyQA, SavvyPrebuy, SavvyBreakdown, SavvyAnalysis).

Call or email your insurance broker or agent and ask that Savvy be added to your aircraft liability policy as an “additional insured” (AI). Ask your broker or agent to obtain a “certificate of insurance” (COI) for:

Savvy Aviation, Inc.
30 N. Gould St., Ste 7491
Sheridan, WY 82801

Ask that the certificate either be emailed to operations@savvyaviation.com or snail-mailed to the Wyoming address above; we much prefer that it be emailed. We will need to have that COI in hand before we can start managing the maintenance of your aircraft.

NOTE: At present, every major GA underwriter is happy to add Savvy as an additional insured. A notable exception is Aerospace Insurance Managers (AIM) who have been charging a $250 annual fee to add Savvy as an additional insured, so you probably should avoid AIM unless and until they eliminate this fee.

IMPORTANT: If your broker is unfamiliar with Savvy, make sure to explain that Savvy is not a maintenance provider, and is in fact forbidden from performing maintenance on your aircraft by the terms of the Savvy service agreement. If your broker has any difficulty with this, please ask him or her to contact us and we’ll help get things straightened out.