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OWN THE JET dives deep into the world of private jet ownership, operations, and the private aviation lifestyle. Whether you're purchasing your first jet, managing a growing fleet, or simply passionate about aviation, this podcast gives you insider access to the conversations happening behind the scenes.
We feature real owners, operators, and aviation leaders sharing their experiences, strategies, and lessons learned — from the flight deck to the boardroom.
OWN THE JET - the official podcast of Aspen Aero Group.
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Without logbooks for your aircraft, it
depreciates the aircraft.
Depending on how old the aircraft is, how
many hours, it could be
anywhere from 20 to 50 percent.
Okay.
Because you can't show what's been done,
and if you can't show, you
have to redo those inspections.
Welcome to Own the Jet by Aspen Aero
Group, where we share
perspectives from some of the
leading voices in private jet ownership
and business aviation.
I'm your host, Derek Savage, along with
my co-host, Jason Spoor,
president of Aspen Aero Group.
Our guest today is Lisa Stewart from Camp
Systems International.
Lisa works with jet owners and their
teams to make sure that
they stay in the loop about
every aspect of their jet's maintenance,
compliance, and operational upkeep.
Join us as we dive deep into the
mechanics, mindset, and moments that
define jet ownership.
And together, we'll learn
what it takes to own the jet.
Welcome, Lisa Stewart to Own the Jet.
Thank you for joining us.
Yeah, thank you for having me.
What does Camp do? Why do I need to know
about Camp as somebody that owns a jet?
Camp is basically a
maintenance tracking system.
Okay.
We make sure that the maintenance that
gets done on the
aircraft is put into our system.
We keep track of all
your logbook entries.
As maintenance is performed, we review
those logbook entries, and
then it allows the customer
to go in and pull a do list so they can
see what's coming due.
That sounds like something that the
maintenance place that, like,
if I buy a jet, I'm going to
have to hire a maintenance company or a
maintenance person or somebody who's
going to be in charge of
maintenance, is that something they buy
or is that something I buy?
So usually the owner buys it.
They might have a management company
that's paying for it and
managing the aircraft for them.
Gotcha.
But really what we do is we're keeping
track of all that for them.
So when they go into the service center,
they can give the service
center access to the camp,
and now they can pull
the do list themselves.
They can say, "Okay, we need to perform
these, you know, all these inspections."
Maybe they're service bulletins, ADs that
come out, and they know by
looking at camp what needs
to be done.
And so the owner doesn't have to be,
"Hey, you need to do this."
They can go into camp and pull it
themselves and see what they need to do
while the aircraft is down
for maintenance.
Okay.
So two questions.
Two questions.
Sure.
Is it as easy as, you know, the software
entry, is that something a
pilot could do if a pilot's on
staff versus a maintenance person?
Yeah.
So the pilot could go and
they could update the times.
They could also go pull the do list.
If there's an inspection that they know
is done, they can send
us the logbook entries.
We'll do everything for them.
So the pilot doesn't have to do anything
other than make sure that
their last actuals are up
to date because that's
how the do list is accurate.
And then they make sure that we get the
logbook entries as
maintenance is performed.
Yeah.
And the other thing you said was AD.
What's that?
An AD is an airworthiness directive.
That comes directly from the FAA.
So anytime the FAA puts something out on
an aircraft that just says,
this needs to be performed.
And usually if the FAA is putting it out,
the OEM has already put it
out as a service bulletin.
Right.
So.
Yeah.
And OEM is the
manufacturer of the aircraft?
Yes.
They're the original equipment
manufacturer for that aircraft.
Gotcha.
So if they're putting it out as a service
bulletin, you guys
know it front and back.
Yes.
And we work very closely with the OEMs.
So if they have a service bulletin that's
getting ready to come out,
they usually kind of reach out to us and
say, hey, we've got this coming out.
Sometimes they'll even reach out to us
and say, hey, we've got an
issue with a sort of generator,
for instance.
We know that it's a dash
three that's effective.
Can you kind of pull us, everybody who
has the dash three, so
that we can make sure that we
reach out to them and so that they're
aware of the service
bulletins coming out,
especially if it's something emergency.
And I'm not saying that there's one like
that, but they will do
that on an important service
bulletin.
Gotcha.
So if I own the jet and if I own my
version of or my copy
of camp or whatever,
however you guys license it, that
basically puts the power in
my hands of the maintenance
scheduling and all of
the stuff for the aircraft.
So if I, like, for instance, I'm thinking
about, like, earlier I said, you know,
wouldn't the maintenance place take care
of that as opposed to
like, do I need to own that
or do they need to own that?
Right. But if I own that, I can fire my
maintenance place and hire
another maintenance place
and I still got all the stuff, right?
That's correct.
That's correct.
So that gives me a little
bit more leverage, right?
Yeah.
So it's a it's a subscription.
It's usually a yearly
subscription that you would pay.
And it's internet based.
So anywhere you have
internet, you can access it.
It's your data.
So whenever you go to another maintenance
facility, you just we
just remove that other
service center and it
could be a management company.
It can be a service center.
We assign the company to the aircraft.
So if you switch, we just remove that old
company and add a new
company onto the aircraft.
So now they have access to it.
One of the important things is that as
you go into the service
center, a lot of times
customers think, well, that service
center is doing that maintenance for me.
And so I don't need maintenance tracking
because they're keeping track of it.
What they don't realize is that service
center is actually using
camp to keep track of their
maintenance.
So we'll have a customer shut off camp
because they're like, oh, I
don't need to pay for that.
And then they go into the service center
and the service centers
says, I need access to camp.
And they're like, oh,
well, I canceled it.
I don't I don't need that.
And they're like, well, that's how we
know how what's coming
due on your aircraft.
Can they get camp back?
The data is always there.
Okay.
So even let's say we raised your stuff.
And it's historical.
So if you've been on for five years and
maybe somebody somebody
bought it and didn't keep it
on a tracking system in five years, all
we had to do is catch it back up.
Everything stays there.
It's a digital copy.
What happens if you don't I mean, like,
obviously, like, there are probably
people that are you said
people cancel.
So like, there's probably people that try
to, like, do all this
without a system like camp.
How does that work?
So one of the most important things about
camp is we keep track of all revisions.
So as the OEM puts out a
revision to the maintenance manual.
Yeah, we keep track of that.
And we update the system as those
revisions come out or
service bulletins or communiques
or or within its directives.
We update all of that for the customer.
If you're doing this in a spreadsheet,
now you've got to keep
track of the revisions,
what tasks have changed,
what a D's have come out.
And if you're not maintaining the correct
revision, you're
going to miss inspections.
But I mean, does it have like a I don't
know, my car's got a
check engine light like what,
you know, got a maintenance minder.
Does the jet.
This is like a big complex machine with a
bunch of electronics
that it does it not tell you
what's wrong with it?
Well, there are some aircraft that do
they'll tell you that, oh,
you have this inspection.
There's this going on or, you know, you
have a fault going on with your aircraft.
But the problem is there are inspections
that are due based on it
could be the part that's
installed.
So this jet might have a dash three and
this one has a dash four
for whatever part it is,
you know, a widget.
And this one has a 3000 hour requirement,
but this one has a 4000 hour requirement.
So we actually look at that and we will
set that up accordingly.
Whereas the airplane, it's not going to
know what serial number you have on.
So it couldn't tell you what's going on
unless you were constantly putting that
information into the aircraft.
Gotcha.
So in other words, camp is taking what
scheduled maintenance is
coming up and projecting that.
Yes.
This is totally different than if we have
a malfunction on the road
and the airplane breaks.
You know, that of course is going to be
reported to camp, but it's
not something that's predictive.
That's correct.
So, you know, we'll get that fixed and
then send the send the log box in.
Yep.
And it'll be recorded.
But the main, the main pusher of camp is
projecting out that maintenance.
So from a seller buyer perspective, you
know, to drop it, which,
you know, you talked about
would be tragic.
Yeah.
And the one thing that you can't just
pull over now, there's no, how are we
going to predict this?
How are we going to
look at this with camp?
It's easy to look ahead in five years,
you know, so here the buyer
comes in, we look at five years
out. This is what the next five years of
this airplane looks like
as far as from a scheduled
maintenance.
Yeah. And that's a good point with the
buyer because whenever
you're going to buy an aircraft,
usually you have to do a pre-buy
inspection and a pre-buy inspections
pretty, it's a pretty
complicated inspection that they do and
they have to review the logbook entries.
And so if you don't have it on a tracking
system, now you're having
to dig through all those log
books, verifying that everything's done.
Whereas if they have camp,
now they can just go through
camp, those logbook entries are attached
to every single task.
Yeah.
So they can pull it up and see the task
that was done when it
was performed. They can see
the logbook entries. They can even go
into history and see every time that
inspection was done and
every single time a logbook entry was
sent in for it. So that makes that
logbook research so much
quicker, even when going down for
maintenance, it makes the
logbook research quicker.
Yep.
So and then the buyer has a good idea of
what you can anticipate the
next five years financially.
Well, and because we have that backup, if
they spill coffee on a logbook entry,
they can just reprint it out of camp and
now they have a new logbook
entry right out of the system.
So Jason, if you're selling a jet or if
you're buying a jet,
helping somebody buy a jet,
as you're looking at available jets, are
you looking for, "Hey,
is this on camp or is this
on some kind of maintenance program?" I
mean, camps, obviously camps like the
default, but I mean,
there's other maintenance programs people
can be on, but you're
looking for that sort of stuff.
Absolutely. Because if we can't see the
predictive and we can't see the past,
that's going to make
things much more difficult.
Yeah. Because without logbooks for your
aircraft, it depreciates the aircraft,
depending on how old
the aircraft is, how many hours, it could
be anywhere from 20 to
50% because you can't show
what's been done. And if you can't show,
you have to redo those inspections.
Okay. So that gets expensive.
It does.
That sounds expensive.
So you want the backup for those logs.
Okay.
And having your aircraft on a tracking
system like camp, it
actually increases the value of your
aircraft because it's showing that you're
maintaining it and that
the work is being performed
and it's a lot easier to go into camp and
pull a do list or a
status report, or even an ADS-B
list to see what's being done on the
aircraft than trying to dig through
hundreds of pages of logbooks.
Gotcha. So is there stuff like the FAA
wants to know about this? I
mean, is there compliance,
a compliance part of this that has to do
with... Obviously, if you're
going to fly an aircraft or
own an aircraft that flies, somebody in
the government is going
to want to know that all
your stuff's up to snuff, right?
Well, and we have a lot of charter
companies on our system.
Okay.
So those are part 135, which is FAR part
135. It's a lot stricter requirements
that they have to be on.
So our system is actually very
customizable. We base everything off of
what the OEM puts out for
their maintenance manual. However, you
might have your own program
that you have to use for your
charter company or because if you're
using your aircraft for hire
at all, you have additional
inspections you have to do. And we can
add all those in. Maybe you added
additional parts. Maybe
you threw a DVD player in that has to be
inspected every year.
Maybe your coffee pot has to be
inspected. So we can track all of that
information. We can track your
anniversary date so you don't
forget to send your
wife an anniversary card.
I didn't know that was an option.
It is. It is an option.
It's a very important option.
So if you're selling camp to somebody
that owns a jet, is it
me, the jet owner that has
like, you know, gets the notifications
and everything? Or is it
somebody in my orbit that
runs the pilot getting this stuff? Like
who's the end user here?
You know, that's a great question because
usually the owner is
actually the one who's
responsible for making sure that
maintenance is done on that
aircraft. And so being able to
have the management company on there and
have your service center
on there, it's extremely
important that they all are able to view
it. So really, the biggest
responsibility is making sure
the times are up to date in the system.
They can have their pilot
do it and they can do it from
our app. It's super easy. But as long as
those last actuals are being put in,
either by the owner,
by the pilot, by the service center, that
way the do list is accurate.
Everything else comes to us.
We take care of it all. We'll review the
logs. We'll make sure that
everything is accurate. We
make sure your revisions are up to date.
We make sure any ADs,
service boltons, communiques,
are getting put into the system so that
whenever they go into the
service center, they know what's
on their do list is accurate. So let's
say you have an
inspection that's due in July.
You have one due in September. It allows
you to schedule everything
in August so that you're not
having to keep downing your aircraft. But
we're going to take care
of the review of the logbook
entries, making sure if we find an error
in that logbook entry,
we're going to reach out to the
service center and say, "Hey, we noticed
that you guys removed this
part number, but we were showing
that this part number was installed. Was
this a fat finger? Are we
missing this information?"
We're not going to reach out to the owner
because then the owner is
just going to have to reach out
to the service center also. So we're
going to take care of all of
that in the background for that
owner so that they're not having to
figure all that information out as well.
Nice. So let's talk about, I want to
segue here to you got started in this
entire field because
you were a Navy electrician. Is that
right? That's correct.
Yeah. Tell me a little bit about
that. What's your journey on getting all
the way to being able to
advise people on their maintenance
for their private jets? So I started out
in the Navy as an aircraft
electrician on S3s, which
was a great plane to learn on because it
was wires everywhere and
they were always breaking.
So I had to constantly chase wires. Once
I got out of the Navy,
I went to AMP School at
Kansas State University. And then I
started working at Beechcraft as a
mechanic. And I did that for
about seven years as a mechanic. And I
was dirty all the time. It was hot. It
was cold. I was like,
"You know, I think I want to do something
else." And my inspector at
the time, he was like, "You
know, there's a group called Fax, which
was maintenance tracking
at Beechcraft." He's like,
"I think you would really enjoy this."
And so I applied. I got
the job, really enjoyed it,
did it for a year and then camp bought
our whole department out. But they
brought us all. So I've
been at camp since 07. And if you talk to
any one of our analysts, I mean, we
average about 20 years
of aviation experience. And they
specialize on their aircraft model. So
when you're calling the
analyst, you're not just calling a call
center. You're not calling
somebody who's just inputting
data. You're calling somebody who's
worked on aircraft, who's been doing
maintenance tracking
for years. I mean, we have some of our
analysts have been doing this for 30
years. Yeah. I mean,
that's a long time. They know the
aircraft. They understand what's going
on. Correct me if I'm
wrong here, but engines are probably like
the biggest thing that you
want to make sure you take
care of because they're the most
expensive part of the jet. Absolutely. So
what can you tell me
about monitoring and or maintaining
engines that maybe you guys
would look at very specifically?
So we actually are the only tracking
system that does engine health
monitoring. Okay. And what that
does is it trends the data that's coming
through. So it'll monitor
the altitude, airspeed, oil
temperature, fuel flow, and it trends
that data and how it's
performing on that engine. So maybe
the battery's starting to die and it's
going to let you know before
you end up with a hot start
because I mean, now you're going to have
to do a borescope and
you're going to have to inspect
everything in the engine. I don't know
what any of that
means, but it's terrifying.
And vibration. Yeah. And vibration. Yes.
So it lets you know that there's
something going on with
your aircraft before you end up with
something catastrophic with
your engine. Yeah. And that's
not when you say catastrophic, you don't
just mean engine, total
engine failure, but I mean,
it could be, you know, something that
ends up being really
expensive that you have to replace.
Exactly. Yes. So I mean, that's
important. Yeah, it's very important
because your engine,
I mean, it could take you from, you know,
maybe a $30,000 item
instead of having to pay like
$700,000 for a complete engine overcall
or things like that. So it is
trending. Yeah, go ahead. How
often do you run the report? How often is
that? So any other taken?
So depending on the aircraft,
typically, and some are manual, so it
could be that the pilot, it gets up to
cruise altitude and he,
he manually writes it down and uploads it
and it could be every
flight. It could be every other
flight. But then we have aircraft that
automatically download and
we have a whole group that is
monitoring and reviewing that trend data,
making sure that if there's
anything, and that's people,
it's, I mean, the information's there,
but it's people looking at
this data. We're, we don't use
a whole lot of artificial intelligence.
It's, I mean, we have people who are
reviewing the logbook
entries, looking over that data, making
sure that everything is
correct. So as they're looking
through the trends and they see something
trending, they're going to,
it's going to send an alert to
the customer right away, letting them
know that they've, they've found
something and they need to
look into this and they'll even give them
a, this is what we think you
need to do. So it even gives
them advice as to what, what they think
it is. So if I buy a jet,
right? Let's say I go to
Bombardier and I buy that right off the
assembly line. I'm
assuming there's an assembly. I'm
thinking like a board factory or
something from the thirties. Kind of
looks like, right off the line,
it's, it comes with camp. Is that, is
that the default? That's
correct. So why? So we give at
least a year free for a brand new
aircraft. You get a year free. Okay. And
the reason why is because,
well, number one, we want you to
understand how important it
is. Right. So that first year,
you're not doing a lot of maintenance
anyway, but we want to make sure that
your aircraft is on there
from the beginning so that we have all of
the enrolled parts. So
every part that goes down the
line shows up on our system. We get that
directly from the OEM. We
work directly with them. And then
that OEM, as you're doing that
maintenance, they can pull reliability
data right out of our system.
Okay. So it's important for them to have
those aircraft on because
they pull, you know, how often
is, are we pulling parts prior to their
life limit? You know, are
they, and, and if they're
starting to do that on a regular basis,
they're either going to
change how that part is produced.
They'll change manufacturers of the part.
They might extend an
inspection if they're not,
they're pulling it and it's still in good
shape. They might extend that
part life, things like that.
What's something that fails the most that
like people might not realize?
I mean, if you pull any type of
reliability data, it's
always going to be tires.
There's always the number of tires and
batteries, probably the
number one thing that gets changed.
I guess they go through a lot of reviews,
right? I mean, they're
just like hitting the ground,
like slamming. Yeah. You don't realize
that when you're owning a
jet, the just paying for it,
that's just the beginning because the
maintenance is expensive. Fuel is
expensive. Insurance is
expensive. Yeah. The operating part of
having an aircraft is very
expensive. Yeah. And a lot of
people pay somebody to manage their
maintenance. So you're paying
somebody a salary to keep up
with your aircraft. When you could just
be paying camp to keep
up with your aircraft,
we will manage that part of it for you.
We're taking that person
out of it. Now, if you have
multiple aircraft, it's good to have
somebody who's like a
charter company. It's good to have
somebody who's kind of monitoring all the
different aircraft. But
as an owner, if you're
using camp, we're going to make sure that
when you go into that
service center, that they can just
log into camp and pull up what's due and
be able to create a work
order and keep track of that for
you so that you're not having to pay
somebody to do that part. Probably
cheaper to do the camp
thing than it is to hire somebody to do
it. Yeah. However much you
would pay for that tank of gas,
for that specific aircraft, that's about
how much camp is. Okay.
And a lot of people are like,
"Well, that's so expensive." Well, you're
getting a lot of peace of
mind with that. And you're
getting... I mean, we have filled service
reps all over the world. You
have your analyst. I'm based
in an OEM, so I'm based at Textron. So
Textron customers know they
can reach out to me. Yeah.
And when you call us, you're calling
somebody. I mean, they're
going to... We have analysts that
they'll talk fishing with their
customers. I mean, you're not just
calling somebody who's just
a robot telling you how to do things.
You're talking to a person who
understands what you're
going through and might even be able to
assist you in other things.
But we become friends with
our customers. I mean, that's one of my
favorite things is talking
to customers over, "I see them
all the time. They'll come see me at
conferences." Because we get to know our
customers. We're very
close with them. And that's a very
important relationship. And
we want you to call us. Yeah.
That's why we hire so many people so that
you have somebody to
call. Yeah. So if there's one
thing that you feel like people should
know prior to owning a jet, I
know you talked about you've
got to keep up with all the stuff. But if
there's one big takeaway or one thing
that you wish people
would know prior to deciding to purchase
a jet, what do you think
that would be? If I'm going into
this conversation, you're like, "Look,
Derek, you need to know this
before you start to even think
about buying a jet." When you're buying
anything bigger than a
piston, pretty much, you have
multiple inspections. It's not a one time
a year thing. If you miss an
inspection and you get ramp
checked, you're in big trouble for
missing inspections.
What's a ramp check? That's when
the FAA approaches you and wants to make
sure that everything is,
make sure your aircraft is up to
date. Okay. Okay. It's random. It's
random. Okay. Come out and pay a visit
and make sure everything's
stuff. Yes. Okay. It's just really
important to know that what's
going on with your aircraft,
because maintenance is expensive and you
don't want to make it more
expensive when you overfly
something and now you've got to catch up,
now you've got fines or, you
know, or worst yet, you skip
an inspection and now you have something
fail because you didn't
replace it or change it or
overhaul it and you can't just pull over
to the side of the road. So
it's very important to make
sure that everything is being tracked.
Okay. So an ounce of
prevention is worth a pound of cure,
right? Yeah. Is that the same? Ounce of
prevention, maintenance. Ounce of
maintenance is worth a pound
of replacement. Yeah. That's pretty true
though. Yeah. Okay. Great.
Is there anything else that
we might need to know about, camp about
aircraft maintenance, like protocol,
anything else that you
would want people that are thinking about
owning a jet to know? Your
service center is not tracking
your maintenance. Okay. They are usually
just putting in your
compliance. So they're letting you
know this is when the work was done, but
they're not telling you
when it's due again. They're
recording the compliance. Okay. They're
not telling you what's due. So just
because you go into the
service center and get that done, you
still need to make sure we're
getting the data. Okay. Sending
us those logbook entries is very
important. You can go in and update the
system all you want, but if
those logbook entries aren't coming to
us, we don't know that that data is
accurate. Yeah. So sending
the data in is extremely important.
Having the backup for your logs is
extremely important.
And we backup all of that. Nice. And if
it hasn't been done, it's
going to flag it, right? Yes. The
system is going to say, Hey, this hasn't
been done. Yes. It's going
to turn it red. Yep. So you're
going to have a red aircraft. Gotcha. If
I want to find out more about camp,
what's the best way to do
that? Campsystems.com. Okay. You can go
to the contact us, reach out
to any of our field service
reps, reach out to our sales team. We're
here to talk. I mean, here,
the one thing that I always
tell customers, cause they're like, well,
how much is your training? We don't
charge for training.
If you don't know how to use the system,
it's no good to you. It's
no good to us. So we want to
train you. Nice. So all of our training
is free. We have filled
service reps who are doing
regional training events all over the
country. So it's, it's, we
want you to know how to use the
system. Feel free to reach out to us. We
have people for you to call. Awesome.
It's very important.
Awesome. Lisa, thank you so much for
joining us. Thank you for
having me. Yeah. It's been a
pleasure. And yeah, keep, I guess, I
guess keep up to date on your
maintenance on your, on your
jet is the moral of the story and make
sure you get a system to
track it all because, you know,
if, if something fails and you didn't
expect it, that's going to
be a lot more expensive in the
long run. So awesome. Yeah. So reach out
to Lisa camp. If you have any questions,
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