Fleet Care Program at Augsburg (EDMA)

What changes at Augsburg for a fleet-care crew?

Augsburg sits at 1515 feet elevation, seven kilometres north-east of the city centre, with a single 1594-metre runway serving almost entirely general and business aviation. Published operating hours are Monday to Saturday 07:00–21:00 local, Sunday and public holidays 09:00–21:00; any movement before 07:00 (or 09:00 on Sundays) or after 21:00 requires a chargeable PPR arranged with the airport. That daytime-only rhythm shapes fleet-care scheduling: if you want an overnight interior or an early-morning pre-departure dry wash, the airport must approve the slot in advance, and the fee becomes part of the monthly budget.

Because there is no scheduled airline service, ramp access and stand allocation follow business-aviation tempo rather than wave timing. Customs and border police are on site, so international arrivals clear directly at Augsburg without diversion. Hangar space exists—heated and unheated hangars of 75 × 25 metres and 75 × 20 metres, built for aircraft up to 6.50 metres tall and 25 metres long, plus a newer business-aviation hangar completed in 2014—but free slots are sporadic, so indoor washing or polishing cannot be assumed and must be requested case-by-case through the program contact.

Augsburg Air Service, part of the Atlas Air Service group, operates a business-jet maintenance base on the field with several hangars covering Embraer, Citation, Beechcraft and Hawker types. Aircraft in heavy maintenance are a recurring presence, and fleet-care visits are often timed to coincide with scheduled inspections so that exterior work, cabin refresh and technical sign-off happen in one visit. The airport also lists Finest Care GmbH, an on-site interior specialist at Flughafenstrasse 2, as the cleaning contact for business aviation; our detailing crew coordinates directly with them when cabin work overlaps with upholstery or carpet specialist tasks.

How does a twelve-month program differ from calling in a detailer each time?

A fleet program replaces the call-each-time model with a standing service calendar. At the start of the contract your operations team and our crew build a twelve-month plan: quick exterior rinses or dry washes after every third rotation, full cabin deep-clean monthly, two-stage exterior wash and single-stage polish each spring and autumn, brightwork correction twice a year, gear-bay degreasing before winter. The calendar lives in a shared document; your dispatcher updates aircraft movements, we adjust crew allocation, and every visit generates a dated service sheet with photographs that go into a digital folder for your tech log or SMS.

The operational difference is priority and predictability. Fleet aircraft jump the queue for AOG requests—if your based G280 returns with a bird strike on the nose cone and you need a same-day touch-up before the next charter leg, the program contact pulls a technician from the roster without the usual lead-time negotiation. The financial difference is a fixed monthly invoice per tail number that covers the agreed service mix, so your finance team budgets appearance as a line item rather than chasing ad-hoc approvals every time a captain requests a cabin refresh.

One-off detailing still makes sense for transient aircraft or annual deep corrections, but for any tail that overnights at Augsburg more than twice a month, the program model smooths both the logistics and the cost curve.

What does the service calendar actually contain?

The calendar is a rolling twelve-month grid, built in the first program week and updated monthly. Each tail number gets a column; each row is a service type with its frequency and trigger. A quick turn—rinseless exterior, cabin tidy, glass and galley—might be set to 'after every international leg' or 'weekly if based'. A full cabin deep-clean with seat conditioning, carpet extraction and galley degreasing might recur on the first Sunday of each month when the aircraft is scheduled down. Exterior wash and wax might be locked to April and October, timed to follow or precede scheduled maintenance so the jet leaves the hangar both airworthy and clean.

Brightwork correction, leading-edge paint touch-up and belly degreasing are typically twice-yearly unless you operate in a high-salinity or industrial-pollution environment, in which case the interval shortens. Gear-bay cleaning and nacelle decon are seasonal: before winter to remove summer insect residue and oil staining, before summer to clear salt and de-icing-fluid residue. Each task has an estimated duration and a preferred time-of-day window; our crew and your dispatcher reconcile the calendar against actual flight plans each week, and any change—early departure, delayed maintenance, added charter leg—triggers a quick reschedule by message or call.

The calendar is not a legal document; it is a working tool that keeps both sides aligned without the friction of repeated quoting and rebooking.

How does airside access work for a third-party detailing crew at Augsburg?

Because Augsburg is an airport of entry with customs and border-police presence but no scheduled airline service, airside-pass procedures follow general-aviation norms rather than the tiered-security model of a hub. Our crew holds German airside passes and, where required, temporary escort is arranged through the handling agent or the airport authority. For a fleet program the airport typically issues a standing access approval that covers the contract period, so the same two or three technicians move between apron and hangar without daily re-validation.

The practical rhythm: your aircraft lands, clears if international, taxis to stand; handling agent provides GPU and, if requested, a tow into a hangar slot. Our crew meets the aircraft with equipment pre-positioned—water cart, vacuum, polish kit, towels in a roller case—and begins work as soon as the captain signs the handover and leaves the apron. If the job is a quick turn and the aircraft will depart the same day, we coordinate directly with your dispatcher on the ready-time; if it is an overnight interior or a multi-day maintenance visit, the crew locks the aircraft after each shift and returns the key to the handling agent or to your maintenance contact at Augsburg Air Service.

Because there are no complex airline waves, stand congestion is rare, but if a busy weekend coincides with multiple based jets returning, the handling agent will ask for a preferred stand or hangar in advance. The program contact manages that dialogue so your operations team does not field separate requests from airport, handler and detailer.

What does southern German weather do to a business jet over twelve months?

Augsburg sits in the pre-Alpine climate band: cold winters with occasional snow, warm summers with afternoon convection, and enough humidity year-round to keep organic staining active on exterior surfaces. Paint oxidation is moderate—not as aggressive as Mediterranean sun, faster than Scandinavian overcast—so a single-stage polish twice a year holds gloss on most factory finishes. Brightwork tarnishes steadily through autumn and winter as moisture and road-salt aerosol settle on nacelle lips, gear doors and belly panels; a pre-winter and post-winter correction cycle keeps corrosion at bay.

Cabin materials face a different stress profile. Aircraft based here often work a mix of short European hops and longer intercontinental legs, so cabins accumulate both passenger wear and the dust and pollen that blow across the apron during summer ground stops. Monthly deep-cleans with extraction and conditioning prevent the gradual dulling of leather and the matting of carpet that turn a three-year interior into a ten-year look. Galley and lavatory surfaces benefit from regular degreasing because catering and waste service in a business-aviation environment sometimes skip the no-touch discipline of airline ground ops.

Winter operations bring the usual pitot-cover and static-port discipline, plus the need to clear Type I residue from belly and gear bays before it hardens. The fleet-care calendar builds those tasks into the pre-winter and post-winter service blocks so they happen without a separate call-out.

Who approves changes to the calendar mid-contract, and how quickly?

The program assigns one contact on each side: your operations manager, chief pilot or flight-department administrator on yours, one of our scheduling coordinators on ours. That pair owns the calendar. If your G650 picks up an unscheduled charter leg and the planned Thursday interior must move to Saturday, your contact messages ours; if our crew identifies leading-edge chips during a quick turn and recommends an unscheduled touch-up, our contact calls yours. Approval is a conversation, not a ticket queue, and most changes close within an hour during the daytime operating window.

AOG requests—bird strike, lavatory-seal leak staining the belly, cabin spill before a client leg—go to a separate 24/7 mobile number monitored by the program contact and two backup technicians. If the request arrives during Augsburg's published hours and the aircraft is on the apron, response time is typically under two hours; if it arrives outside curfew or on a Sunday, we coordinate the chargeable PPR with the airport, and the crew is on-site as soon as the field opens or the PPR slot begins.

The twelve-month contract is reviewed quarterly in a thirty-minute call with your operations team: we compare planned versus actual service counts, adjust frequencies if usage patterns have changed, and shift budget between exterior and interior if one is over-tracking. The contract renews automatically unless either side gives sixty days' notice, so most fleet programs run for several years with only minor annual adjustments to scope or pricing.