New MSC in San Diego - Coast Air Center- any pireps?

[JohnB]

Just heard about a recently opened Mooney service center Coast Air Center in San Diego CA at MYF. They took over Crowns MSC designation and hired most of Crown Aviation’s top staff. Anyone have any pireps regarding this shop? 

They seem like they’re gearing up to be a nice one but I’d like to hear from anyone with experience particularly Mooney experience. 

Edited February 8, 2020 by JohnB

[carusoam]

https://coastaircenter.com

The Mooney.com site points to the CAC site...

CAC uses the Mooney logo... and at least one other brand logo as well...

Best regards,

-a-

[kmyfm20s]

All of the old Mooney staff From Crown is gone. Coast retained one critical person for a little bit but he left shortly after.  I do see Mooney’s in there but not like Crown had. FWIW I did not use them for my annual, I used another non MSC shop on my field because I had a better relationship with the mechanics and felt like they had as much or more Mooney experience. Coast shop rates where higher than the all others when I checked but still a lot less than the Mercedes dealers.

[JohnB]

4 hours ago, kmyfm20s said:

All of the old Mooney staff From Crown is gone. Coast retained one critical person for a little bit but he left shortly after.  I do see Mooney’s in there but not like Crown had. FWIW I did not use them for my annual, I used another non MSC shop on my field because I had a better relationship with the mechanics and felt like they had as much or more Mooney experience. Coast shop rates where higher than the all others when I checked but still a lot less than the Mercedes dealers.

Hugely helpful, being you’re on that field! Did you like Crown when they were up and running or have you always used a non MSC?

[kmyfm20s]

Hugely helpful, being you’re on that field! Did you like Crown when they were up and running or have you always used a non MSC?

I always used Crown before and was very happy with them. Bill and Dave were the last of the truly MSC trained mechanic. I was sorry to see them go. Bill went to Coast after Crown but I think it was to big of Culture shock and ended up leaving. If he continued at coast I would have used them. Most of them were offered jobs at High Performance at Gillespie field but they weren’t going to add Mooney’s for servicing. They were going to have them recondition older Piper’s and Bonaza’s. Not sure if that happened or not. I was happy with Gibbs that did my last annual but I will probably find another MSC for every other annual. Not sure which I’m going to select yet.


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[JohnB]

Thank you so much @kmyfm20s! Much appreciated 

[kortopates]

They lost Bill, but they still have Stan whom was with Crown for I think as much as 20 yrs, initially on jets, but later the second half on Mooneys and trained by Bill. Stan is now their chief inspector and quite good with Mooneys; but not quite nearly the same as when Crown had several Mooney veterans with a huge amount of knowledge.
I personally think their pricing is high based on the number of hours I see clients getting billed for some things. But I don't see people going back to re-fix something - which is a good sign.


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[elimansour]

I had my last annual there.  Nice group of folks and professionally run shop.  Stan is great to work with and did my annual last year.  I was very pleased with the quality of the work and the attention to detail and open communication.  They work well with Savvy also which was a plus.

[JohnB]

PIREP - Just finished my annual at Coast Air Center at MGY, and they did a remarkable job. Very thorough and professional! Very good at diagnostic, figuring out things baffling to other centers. Hope they find a pilot able to fly all Mooneys for test flights, and get their avionics division up and running (they're working on it) and it truly might become a one stop service center of excellence. Recommended!

[kmyfm20s]

That’s really great to hear! They seem to be getting into their groove now that some of the newness is wearing off. I need to swing by and start to develop a relationship with them. Did you feel like the hours billed and rates were fair? Care to share what they figured out that stumped other mechanics? 

[JohnB]

4 minutes ago, kmyfm20s said:

That’s really great to hear! They seem to be getting into their groove now that some of the newness is wearing off. I need to swing by and start to develop a relationship with them. Did you feel like the hours billed and rates were fair? Care to share what they figured out that stumped other mechanics? 

Prices were very fair and reasonable compared to other service centers. They figured out a a higher CHT temp issue that had previously stumped my mechanics for well over a year by being very detailed in their investigation and repair. Runs like new now!

One thing I thought was different about Coast, is that they require a small deposit to reserve the time for your annual in advance which is applied to your bill. So when its your turn, they can devote their mechanics to work exclusively on your plane for that time rather than the shop scheduling as many planes as they can possibly squeeze in, with the shop assuming that some people will cancel. 

 

[NotarPilot]

On 11/1/2020 at 8:32 PM, JohnB said:

Prices were very fair and reasonable compared to other service centers. They figured out a a higher CHT temp issue that had previously stumped my mechanics for well over a year by being very detailed in their investigation and repair. Runs like new now!

One thing I thought was different about Coast, is that they require a small deposit to reserve the time for your annual in advance which is applied to your bill. So when its your turn, they can devote their mechanics to work exclusively on your plane for that time rather than the shop scheduling as many planes as they can possibly squeeze in, with the shop assuming that some people will cancel. 

 

That’s great to hear. I took my J to Crown in 2016 and would not go back to them. I didn’t care for their billing practices. They really nickel and dimed me to pad the bill. They Bill ended up being the most expensive in my experience owning an airplane at $6,000 and they didn’t really do anything special to the plane. It was generally a minor annual where they found a few minor squawks and changed the tires for me. Then I get slapped with a $6k bill with things like .25 hour for oil sample and .5 hour to replace cotter pins in the seat rails. I was not happy. I would never go back to Crown. I truly hope Coast Air Center is better.