Mike Sierra Professionals is my own consulting company. I specialize in general commercial and business aviation consulting and I pride myself in working only with the best professionals on the market. Our services range from airline start-up’s, through quality auditing up to aircraft appraisal and technical services (or technical representation) for leasing companies and airlines alike.

Mike Sierra Professionals hard at work!

As a freelancer, I was a given the opportunity to become Acting Technical Director for a small charter airline named Bingo Airways. This was a fantastic experience, as the operator was subcontracting virtually all maintenance and airworthiness tasks, which has left me as a “one-man-show” responsible for complete oversight of the maintenance process. As the airline was, very unfortunatelly, going off the market, I had an opportunity to work closely with aircraft lessors during three aircraft redeliveries. As sad experience as this may be, it was yet another steep learning curve and a fantastic opportunity to meet great people from the aircraft leasing business.

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OLT Express was an extremely ambitious airline project, probably the largest one ever undertaken in Poland. The OLT Express brand consisted of three separate, but cooperating companies and I was fortunate enough to work as the Technical Vice President for OLT Express Regional – a company operating 7 ATR-72 aircraft. Together with a partner, it was my duty to get the company up and running within a seemingly impossible 3 month period. Seemingly impossible – because we got it done!

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I have worked for Blue Jet for over a year as a Quality Director. This was a great period in my life, during which I became even more familiar with EASA regulations, especially that the company has three separate (EASA certified) departments – flight operations (OPS 1, now EASA OPS), airworthiness management (PART M) and aircraft maintenance (PART 145). I consider the creation of a full Quality Manual, separated from the remaining company Quality Procedures, to be my greatest achievement during this period.

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My aviation experience has begun with Jet Air, a private regional airline in Poland. I have spent over four years with this company and advanced from a technical assistance up to a Technical Director and, later on, to Quality Director. The time at Jet Air was a fantastic and very steep learning curve, mazing through EASA regulations, market needs and exploring my creative talents within a very strongly regulated industry. During this time, I have created from scratch an entire maintenance department – from the original business plan up to the final certification process.

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I had the pleasure of writing four lenghty articles for the “Pilot Club Magazine” – a publication aimed at private pilots, avaition enthusiasts and aircraft mechanics. My articles dealt mainly with regulatory aspects, such as EASA regulations for general aviation, maintenance organizations and certification as well as the the complexity of landing a job as an aircraft mechanic.

This article, titled “How not to drown in the new maze of regulations”, was written at the end of 2007, when EASA rules were to be adopted also to general aviation. In this text, I try to explain the novelties that will be brought forward by the new legislature. At the same time, I intended to get people (especially GA aircraft owners and licensed mechanics) ready for what will come to them in less than a year’s time. Looking back, I must say that my comments and weighed out criticism have proven to be correct by the coming years.

The EASA Part 145 regulation has inflicted some serious changes in the way aircraft maintenance was perceived, especially in the general aviation sector. This article, “A PARTy in the maintenance organization” attempted to explain the Part 145 requirements to the lay person. I put a strong emphasis on what maintenance a pilot-owner may (or, more importantly, may not) perform on his or her aircraft. Apart from that, I explained how Part 145 certified organizations are implicitly required by the JAR-OPS regulations, while pointing out that this particular piece of legislature will shortly be replaced by EU-OPS.

I am a strong believer that the role of an aircraft mechanic is vital to the overall aviation industry and that this particular profession presents a fantastic opportunity to young people, who are just entering the work force. “Job – mechanic” aimed to explain to people what steps they need to undertake in order to become a member of this elite group of professionals. Also, it was my intention to highlight the regulations which need to be observed by apsiring mechanics (EASA Part 66 in particular) and also point certain drawbacks and problems that people pursuing this particular career path may be facing.

The article “Safety Culture” was intended to shift the aircraft accident paradigm from the human and/or machine error approach to the organizational viewpoint. It was my intention to highlight the idea of an overall safety culture within airlines, maintenance organizations and even the smallest CAMOs. An important part of the overall safety culture is the “just culture” idea, which is at times terribly difficult to understand and even more so to implement within a company. The article focuses on the difficulties in this mind changing approach.

AirlineBasics.com is my own project aimed at creating a comprehensive resource on how airlines operate and how one can succeed in the competitive airline business. The site has a blog format, with man articles written by me. The project is still in its conceptual phase and I would love to welcome guest bloggers and authors to contribute to this site. Together, we can create a fantastic place for all airline enthusiasts and professionals to get together and share their knowledge and experience.