NobleCarpetCleaners
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- Joined
- May 16, 2010
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- 1,191
- Name
- Noble Carpet Cleaners
For 10+ years I've been avoiding this question on forums because of so much confusion in the cleaning and restoration industry. We have so many "experts" and I haven't wanted to get into a pissing contest. But what the heck, I'll cram 20 years of past experience in here and save some poor schmuck from some hurt.
Cleaning aircraft interiors has a couple factors (I'm going to cover, expertise, liability, economics) to face and overcome. First, there's expertise. Who among us in the cleaning and restoration business has the expertise (let along the experience) to be stepping on board and general aviation or commercial aircraft to clean?, and, clean what?, the carpet?, the seats?, the sidewalls?, the endless other covered surfaces?
The questions I'm throwing out here aren't meant to confront anyone or be negative, I'm asking them to challenge our understanding of the subject of working on/around aircraft so we don't perpetuate the stigma that the cleaning and restoration industry don't always proceed with competence and expertise.
Another factor is liability. The subject of liability is like what we say to someone driving off in their car, "drive safe, talk to you later". Easy said, takes effort to embrace and manage. When you talk aircraft, you're not just talking about your liability of laying your hands on plane itself, nowadays it's rivaled by just entering onto an airport itself.
Airports are almost exclusively managed by county municipalities. If you aspire to strip and wax the terminal floors as an outside vendor they are going to require proof of liability insurance, proof of workmans comp.(if you have employees), and a copy of your local business license, and forget the lowball bidding process. The high limit of your commercial side of the policy could be in fact be nose bleed high. For instance, my local airport authority requires 3.8 million in liability (5 years ago, think it's more now?, uh ya I think so too) just to do work inside the terminal or airport offices.
Being on the tarmac (beyond the cyclone fencing where the airplanes live) is often a different limit requirement. They will be different county to county state to state. You're typically going to be required to have a vendor badge and take their security class/s and pass a background check. This will separate the felons from the, uh, uh, non-felons.
But we want to work on airplanes and not the terminal floors and toilets. Do we want to aspire to work on commercial airliners or corporate aircraft? Commercial airlines are going to have their own specific set of liability requirements and their actual cleaning needs are limited and might surprise you. Typically their needs outside of their maintenance hubs are late night barf and pee cleanup and they expect on-call demand. And at their maintenance hubs I have searched and searched and have never found and a professional cleaner who managed to get an account to clean carpets and/or seats while the jets were down for phase maintenance. Believe me I beat on the door of a huge carrier in San Francisco to get a contract or even one off work and it was a pipe dream.
Or do we want to work on general aviation planes? The list of examples here could be quite large. The weekend warrior pilot who chains down his older Cessna 172 at the local sleepy county airport or private airstrip might get you in the gate to steam clean 9.6 feet of old dusty wool carpet. Not likely you're going to need a security badge.
Stay tuned for part 2.
Cleaning aircraft interiors has a couple factors (I'm going to cover, expertise, liability, economics) to face and overcome. First, there's expertise. Who among us in the cleaning and restoration business has the expertise (let along the experience) to be stepping on board and general aviation or commercial aircraft to clean?, and, clean what?, the carpet?, the seats?, the sidewalls?, the endless other covered surfaces?
The questions I'm throwing out here aren't meant to confront anyone or be negative, I'm asking them to challenge our understanding of the subject of working on/around aircraft so we don't perpetuate the stigma that the cleaning and restoration industry don't always proceed with competence and expertise.
Another factor is liability. The subject of liability is like what we say to someone driving off in their car, "drive safe, talk to you later". Easy said, takes effort to embrace and manage. When you talk aircraft, you're not just talking about your liability of laying your hands on plane itself, nowadays it's rivaled by just entering onto an airport itself.
Airports are almost exclusively managed by county municipalities. If you aspire to strip and wax the terminal floors as an outside vendor they are going to require proof of liability insurance, proof of workmans comp.(if you have employees), and a copy of your local business license, and forget the lowball bidding process. The high limit of your commercial side of the policy could be in fact be nose bleed high. For instance, my local airport authority requires 3.8 million in liability (5 years ago, think it's more now?, uh ya I think so too) just to do work inside the terminal or airport offices.
Being on the tarmac (beyond the cyclone fencing where the airplanes live) is often a different limit requirement. They will be different county to county state to state. You're typically going to be required to have a vendor badge and take their security class/s and pass a background check. This will separate the felons from the, uh, uh, non-felons.
But we want to work on airplanes and not the terminal floors and toilets. Do we want to aspire to work on commercial airliners or corporate aircraft? Commercial airlines are going to have their own specific set of liability requirements and their actual cleaning needs are limited and might surprise you. Typically their needs outside of their maintenance hubs are late night barf and pee cleanup and they expect on-call demand. And at their maintenance hubs I have searched and searched and have never found and a professional cleaner who managed to get an account to clean carpets and/or seats while the jets were down for phase maintenance. Believe me I beat on the door of a huge carrier in San Francisco to get a contract or even one off work and it was a pipe dream.
Or do we want to work on general aviation planes? The list of examples here could be quite large. The weekend warrior pilot who chains down his older Cessna 172 at the local sleepy county airport or private airstrip might get you in the gate to steam clean 9.6 feet of old dusty wool carpet. Not likely you're going to need a security badge.
Stay tuned for part 2.
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