In the beginning there was CARDEX – a card catalog tracking aircraft maintenance – a laborious process at the best of times.

Then came subscribing to a service that updated your information on their computer, sending you forms thru mail regarding component changes, inspections, services, etc.

You filled them out (complied with) and returned them to the service provider and next month you received a new set with new criteria and maintenance requirements.

As personal computers and Windows blasted into almost all businesses, it made sense someone would try to put airworthiness and maintenance requirements in a program on their personal computer.

Jump forward 30 years and let’s look at the industry today. We have sophisticated computing and reporting equipment that should all but eliminate the worry of missing, avoiding, forgetting, or somehow not complying with any issue on an aircraft – but it doesn’t.

Many examples of shoddy paperwork have surfaced over the years – some resulting in catastrophes which could and should have been avoided. What amazes me in this day and age are the number of operations with computers using spreadsheets to do the job.

I love spreadsheets but when it comes to forecasting aircraft maintenance requirements, spreadsheets are inadequate – it’s just the nature of the beast.

One of the most under appreciated, under valued programs you get with Microsoft Office PRO is Access – a database management system.

Here you have a program paid for that most people never venture near say perchance a smart secretary creating the boss’s holiday card mailing lists in Microsoft Access.

Microsoft Access – a database that out of the box is the perfect cost effective solution to a multifaceted challenge tracking and forecasting aircraft maintenance.

Why would you want to use anything else? First of all the problem associated with forecasting and tracking aircraft maintenance is based on several criteria, for example – Time Between Overhaul, Time Since Overhaul, Time Since New,and Life Limit.

Looking at this closely, you need to trigger events in a database that if complied with will maintain and continually exceed your airworthiness requirements.

Now imagine capturing all the cost associated with running an operation simply with daily use of a good program operated by good people resulting in historical data used to easily forecast budgets… and any heavy maintenance?

I don’t sell Microsoft products however Microsoft Access is a very stable and cost effective solution to tracking any number of aircraft and maintenance requirements.

By the way, export data from your daily aircraft maintenance operations for use in Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Visio, and more… how easy is that? You already have one or more of the programs I listed right?

Hats off to all that actively use a database to track aircraft maintenance; the industry is better off for it.

As someone responsive to the needs for superb aircraft records for 30 years, I welcome your comments and questions.