“I’m surly,” announces the voice on the other end of the phone. It’s a rather unusual way to start a conversation, but then again Kress Latham is, well, a bit unusual. “I’m having a Brand X facility experience and it makes me surly. So if you detect surliness, it’s not directed at you.Kress is a long-time customer of Duncan Aviation and a recent co-owner of International Jet Management. He’s a hard worker: diligent and determined. It’s how he advanced from an airframe mechanic to a Director of Maintenance in three years. It’s also how he earns the respect of his clients.

As a DOM of 10 years, he has done business at nearly every service maintenance center in the United States. Anything less than good work ethic, communication and collaboration annoy him, a lot. “Brand X” is Kress’ way of referring to a company he’s having a difficult experience with.

Kress has a rather quirky sense of humor that makes him easy to talk to, even on bad days. And today is definitely one of those days. Without a hint of menacing irritability, he explains the situation. The plane he’s stepped in to help manage has been in a pre-buy situation for eight months. His experience, in his own words, has been “riddled with ill will and miscommunications.”

There have obviously been issues with the project—many issues—although no one really deserves the blame. A case in point is electrical components needed for an installation. Only one vendor makes them and they require an eight week lead time. Brand X wasn’t particularly proactive in identifying this beforehand.

“They said: ‘There is no alternative solution. This is the part. This is who makes it. Eight weeks.’ I didn’t believe them,” says Kress. “There’s always an alternative solution. So I started calling everyone in the country.”

Vendors. Surplus suppliers. Service Reps participating at the NBAA convention. No one who might have—or who knows someone who might have—parts that could conceivably meet the specifications was left uncalled. And then a vendor finds nine surplus parts… at another one of Brand X’s facilities.

“Brand X assured me they looked everywhere at all similar parts and that was the only part they could get.” says Kress.

He’s not the kind of guy who comes across as being vindictive or petty, but it’s not difficult to imagine him setting the parts—in a Brand X box—on the desk of his Brand X contact: concrete proof that an alternative did in fact exist.

“This doesn’t happen at Duncan Aviation,” says Kress flatly. “I’ll ask for alternatives and ten happy people will try as diligently as I will to find solutions.”

“We’re all in this to make money,” says Kress, “but you make money by making relationships.” And relationships are what Duncan Aviation is all about.

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