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Yup, and also as a former line guy supervisor I can say for a fact a line guy isn't going to even think about tow limits on small planes. Even if you have neon orange light up markings painted on you nose strut, they won't see it. Can't even count how many Mooney's I've seen over turned. There is only one way to ensure your airplane isn't damaged and that is to be there while it's moved. FBO's view small planes as nothing but a pain in their ass, they make no money on them, and want them gone. Remember that when you let them service your plane. And be there when they do!
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Yup, and also as a former line guy supervisor I can say for a fact a line guy isn't going to even think about tow limits on small planes. Even if you have neon orange light up markings painted on you nose strut, they won't see it. Can't even count how many Mooney's I've seen over turned. There is only one way to ensure your airplane isn't damaged and that is to be there while it's moved. FBO's view small planes as nothing but a pain in their ass, they make no money on them, and want them gone. Remember that when you let them service your plane. And be there when they do!
That has not been my experience at all. With the exception of the fucktards at Landmark at KRDU (It's Signature now, and if it's the same people, fuck them), I have always been treated as if the possibility exists that I could be the chief pilot of a corporate operator and flying my own plane.
I keep waiting for Trump to put someone at the top of the FAA to drop the hammer on the predatory practices by the FBOs. I have been flying in and out of PBI for a decade and when Trump was running for office in 2016, I heard stories from FBO employees talking about how pissed he was at the FBOs for taking him to the cleaners on fees for his 757 and not offering fuel discounts for overpriced Jet-A. I suspect they're somewhere on his list of people to exact revenge against and what needs to happen is twofold:
* Penalties need to be attached to violating grant assurances to give the regs some teeth, something I'm guessing wasn't necessary when the civil aviation act was passed back in the 1930s.
https://www.faa.gov/airports/resources/publications/orders/compliance_5190_6/media/5190_6b_appC.pdf
* Options for self-handling of aircraft should exist if desired. Many FBOs operate in a manner that meets, at least, the Wikipedia definition of a Racket and also engage in Price Fixing. Why is it whenever you see Signature and Atlantic Aviation show up on the same field that prices skyrocket?
A racket, according to the current common and most general definition, is an organized criminal act in which the criminal act is some form of substantial business, or a way to earn illegal money either regularly, or briefly but repeatedly. A racket is therefore generally a repeated or continuous organized criminal operation. However, according to the more specific definition, racketeering constitutes extortion or criminal coercion. Originally and often still specifically, a “racket” referred to a criminal act in which the perpetrator or perpetrators fraudulently offer a service to solve a nonexistent problem, a service that will not be put into effect, or a service that would not exist without the racket. Conducting a racket is racketeering.[1] Particularly, the potential problem may be caused by the same party that offers to solve it, but that fact may be concealed, with the specific intent to engender continual patronage for this party.
The most common example of a racket is the "protection racket", which promises to protect the target business or person from dangerous individuals in the neighborhood and then either collects the money or causes damage to the business until the owner pays. The racket exists as both the problem and its solution, and it is used as a method of extortion.
A friend of mine showed up to an airport in Fort Lauderdale the week before the Superbowl in a light piston single to drop off a part. He checked the NOTAMs and there was a published Superbowl NOTAM that applied only to jet/turboprop aircraft. The airport was not busy. When he arrived, the FBO wanted $1,700 to park. They offered to waive it because he was leaving right away and he was happy to not have been required to pay, but that should have never been expected in the first place.