• Basic Information
• FAQ
• Type Support – what is it?
• One Comment only
• Validity of the Manuals
• Form for the Service Agreement

When DG Flugzeugbau was founded in 1996, we agreed, without question, to continue complete type support for all DG aircraft built to that date.

Since then, the Internet has evolved into a mass-communication medium, enabling pilots from all over the world to post their support questions directly to the original manufacturer and type supporter. This has presented us with a steadily increasing flood of support questions, and as you know, we haveanswered them all.

Channeling the many inquiries and the creation of the technical support forum brought some temporary relief, but this capacity was quickly eaten-up by the exponentially increasing flood of support questions.

The acquisition of the LS types from Rolladen-Schneider aggravated the situation. A transfer of the responsibility for LS-4 and LS-6 technical support to Slovenia unfortunately didn’t work out. AMS turned silent after a short while, and pilots begun calling us again.

Political pressure put on the EASA to balance their budget from 2004 onwards has caused extra bureaucracy and soaring costs for us.

Continued support of the older aircraft types has developed into a substantial financial loss for the company. We performed a detailed cost-analysis early in 2009 which revealed an annual net loss of hundreds of thousands Euros, which had to be absorbed and subsidized by other departments within the company.

This situation could not continue as is, it would have endangered the health of whole company!

There is no question that selling a very expensive new aircraft creates a substantial after-sale support responsibility. We take this for granted; therefore nothing will change for aircraft manufactured by DG Flugzeugbau GmbH since 1996, about 700 in total. (an this support is transferrable, if one of these gliders is subsequently sold!)

However, how should we deal with the older aircraft constructed by Glaser-Dirks and Rolladen-Schneider? DG-Flugzeugbau GmbH  may have inherited the lineage but never sold or was compensated for these older aircraft. We therefore have no legal obligation to provide continuing free service. These older Glaser-Dirks and Rolladen-Schneider aircraft are therefore subject  to the following:

We are regrettably unable to continue providing free service for aircraft manufactured by Glaser-Dirks and Rolladen Schneider.

However, to assist you to keep your aircraft airworthy and in good condition, we offer you a service agreement for an annual fee. Starting with the year 2010, any support services for Glaser-Dirks and Rolladen-Schneider aircraft are only available through this service agreement existing since 2010.

We are pleased to announce that in the recent months we have updated all of our manuals to provide you the customer with the latest information concerning the safe and efficient operation of your aircraft. This was a huge work! Especially the manuals of LS gliders were in terrible condition, faulty and uncomplete! But unfortunately these manuals cannot longer be provided free of charge. The manuals are available exclusivly through a service agreement for the year 2010. Customers with a service agreement beginning not before 2011 will have to purchase the manual later. That means that those customers – if they need any services – have to pay the outstanding fees since 2010 later.

A service bulletin states the new regulations concerning these service manuals:
Actual service manuals – after they are approved by the authorities – are necessary for each pilot especially for the next annual check. Service manuals are mandatory for the operation of the aircraft according to “Part M” (Standard Maintenance Program) of the EASA rules.

We can imagine that most affected pilots were startled reading this news. We agree that it is not so easy to accept paying for something that was free for so long time.

However, we think it only fair to ask aircraft owners to contribute their share for covering the service cost of older aircraft, which we support but never earned any revenue on. In our hearts we have strong ties to all glider pilots in the world. But in the interest of these pilots, we cannot continue subsidizing the community out of our own pockets, as we have done for 15 years, and risk the ruin of yet another manufacturer….

The only other alternative to paid service contracts would have been to abandon all type support and service for the aircraft built by Glaser-Dirks and Rolladen-Schneider.

Obviously we believe that this would be in no one’s interest.

Here you will find the Form for the Service Agreement.
Please read it carefully, complete all fields and sign it. Send it to us via letter, FAX or e-mail (as PDF document), and please transfer the first premium. This will help us to provide you with continued service without interruption.

DG SUPPORT CONTRACT – SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS

Type Support” – What does it mean?

Out of the flood of comments received on this topic, I learned that a large number of pilots apparently do not know what ”type support” or “type responsibility” really mean. For us is providing type support part of our daily business, but for you?

Maybe I should have explained you more about “type support” from the very beginning, told you more about the very aviation-specific nature of this process. It is not a service contract, and you won’t find it for normal technical good, not even for cars. So what is it all about?

If someone designs and builds an aircraft, with the intent to mass-produce and sell this aircraft, then that aircraft must be type-certified. The certification document will list the manufacturer as responsible to provide (ongoing) type support. In a nutshell, this means the manufacturer must ensure the continued airworthiness and safety of that aircraft type. Existing aircraft are not necessarily grounded if the type-maintaining organization disappears for any reason. However, if an incident happens due to a design flaw and no type supporter organization exists to develop a remedy to that flaw, all existing aircraft of that type might become grounded permanently.

This means: Active type support is a prerequisite to ensure continued aircraft operation under an existing type certificate.

The EASA provides in its regulations a clear definition of a type supporter’s responsibilities. They can be viewed on the EASA home page (Regulation EU-VO 1702, Part 21).

However, EASA did not define the rights of a type supporter, the “T/C Holder” in particular the right to charge for the type support effort (in contrast to their own well defined fee structure…). But economic aspects of type support is out of scope for EASA, their charter is to ensure aviation safety. And their way of thinking is heavily influenced by the aspects of large-scale commercial aviation. Nobody would be surprised if companies like Airbus cover their type support expenses in the sales price they charge their airline customers.

But back to a T/C holders responsibilities:
Main responsibility is to be present and available to answer questions regarding safety and airworthiness of a particular aircraft type (not individual aircraft, that is the domain of service operations).

He has to collaborate with and support all aeronautical authorities all over the world, wherever aircraft of this type are registered. This collaboration becomes particular labor-intensive when incidents or accidents occur. Particular the American FAA keeps us busy with questions and even requested whole expert reports after accidents. Of course we cannot charge the authorities for this.

EASA has even requirements on the organizational structure of a T/C holder. It has to have at least three independent engineers, which forces small organizations to utilize external contractors. EASA requires certification of the organization itself, together with recurring (expensive) audits. And it require a documented quality management. These are all regulations common to large commercial aircraft manufacturers, but these regulations put a severe burden on small and medium enterprises.

For the pilot is the type supporter the natural contact for all kind of technical questions. The volume of this communication grew exponential, as we reported earlier. Some companies handled this very cool:
They appeared deaf and nobody got any answer. But this is certainly not our style. However, answering all the questions we receive keeps several senior employees pretty busy.

Certainly we cannot write invoices for that. Or should we first listen to a problem description, then tell the customer how much the answer would cost? Even the thought about this is ridiculous!

In addition to pilots we support service companies all over the world with drawings, service instructions and detailed assistance for complex repairs. We have done this free of charge all the time.

Finally, the type supporter has the full responsibility for maintaining the technical soundness and safety of the aircraft type design. This means that worldwide any incident with structural failure has to be reported to the certification authority – EASA in our case – which will request the type supporter to conduct an investigation. If a design flaw caused the structural failure, a solution must be developed to prevent reoccurrence of that failure on any existing aircraft of this type. The type supporter has to create the according service bulletins and airworthiness directives, and has even to pay for their certification.

There is no comparable process in the frequently quoted automotive industry. If a control rod breaks on a 30 years old car, then it is just broken, and nobody cares. A control linkage problem on a 30 years old DG-100 caused the design of a reinforced joint, which had to be installed into any existing aircraft of this 30 years old type. And the type supporter is in charge to organize this global upgrade.

Another responsibility is the creation, maintenance and distribution of all required manuals. Creation is part of the type certification process. But continuous maintenance is equally important. There are always new considerations for the safe operation, which must be passed on to pilots.

In this respect has the EASA regulation a flaw:
Wilhelm Dirks told me several years ago that there is an urged need to revise the old DG and LS manuals, because of many contained errors. You know my engagement for safer glider flying, but at that moment I thought who might fund that work. I couldn’t find someone, so I deferred that work. The lack of an EASA sanctioned type maintenance fee structure had a negative safety impact in that case.

After we decided in August to introduce service contracts with the beginning of 2010, we started to revise these old manuals. Currently the pilot’s operations handbook (POH, Flight Manual) for DG-100 and LS-1 are finished, as well as the service manuals for all other DG and LS aircraft. Five persons worked on these manuals from August to December, scanning thousands of pages, revising text and layout. The new manuals not only look better, they are – hopefully – error-free. This was only possible since the service contracts are funding this kind of activities, and possibly even more.

There are more tasks to be handled by the type supporter, but I will skip here.

If an owner registers his aircraft, then he or she accepts the prevailing regulations of the registering authority and the type certification authority, the EASA in our case. Implicit is the acceptance of the type supporter. It should be obvious that he or she then also accept the respective fraction of type support cost, or?

The question is, can individual cost for a particular aircraft be identified so that one pilot only pays the cost he caused? And how much can we allow a pilot to select what service he or she likes to use?

I hope you guessed the right answer already: none of the above!

The primary cost factor of type support is already in the need of its existence. It is composed from authority fees, calls and mails from pilots, altogether important but non-chargeable services.

One option would be to charge for Service Bulletins by requiring a release certificate.

We tried this with two service bulletins for the DG-100, and we took the liberty to charge some money for it. It spawned massive protests, including verbal assaults. “Street robbery” was even one of the milder expressions…

But let me ask, do we deserve this?
Should we endure the same for each and every future service bulletin?

You can imagine how much we “enjoyed” this….
At this point we recognized there is only one path into the future:

When:

• Cost of type support are de-facto fixed cost,
• It is impossible, technical and administratively, to clearly assign particular cost to a particular aircraft
• Type support is essential for every pilot and the safe operation of each aircraft,

Then:

• There is only one fair and non-discriminatory formula possible:

And the idea of the Service contract was born….

Validity of the Manuals