What it costs
How much does an aircraft exterior wash cost?
Cost here is labour, and labour is hours. What sets the hours is the aircraft in front of us: its size, what is bonded to the paint, where it can be parked and when it has to fly. Two Citations on the same ramp can differ by half a working day on those four things alone. So the honest answer to the cost question is a list of what moves it, and this page is that list, in enough detail to place your own aircraft at the easy end or the hard end before you speak to anyone.
Why there is no number on this page
Every job here is quoted against a written scope, with the exclusions named, before a crew is booked. That is why there is no rate on this page. A printed number would be set for one aircraft, in one condition, at one airport, and wrong for most of the fleet reading it. It would also stop behaving like a price. It becomes a ceiling, and the jobs that need more hours than the ceiling allows get squeezed to fit, which shows up in the finish. The real question is who is doing the guessing. A firm number given before anyone has seen the aircraft, the paint and the parking is a guess, and the guess is corrected later, on the invoice or on the airframe.
What actually moves the number
Airframe size, and how far off the ground the top of it is
A wash is labour against painted surface area, and surface area does not scale the way a spec sheet does. The painted area of a large-cabin jet is several times that of a light twin, and far more of it is out of reach. A King Air fin can be worked from a ladder. A Global fin cannot: that means a lift, a spotter, repositioning between panels, and a deliberately slower pace because heavy equipment is moving next to paint. Height is what turns a long day into crew-days.
What is actually on the paint
Soot from the APU and the engine nacelles behaves nothing like pollen. Bug strike on the leading edges and radome bonds as it dries and needs dwell time rather than pressure. Brake dust and hydraulic weep settle on the gear legs and in the wheel wells, and neither lifts with what is used on the upper fuselage. Georgia pine pollen in spring packs into every seam and fastener head and will not come out in one pass. Each of those is a separate step with its own chemistry, and your airframe may need one of them or all of them.
How long since the last proper wash
Soil that has been through a Georgia summer is not sitting on the paint any more, it is bonded to it. Exhaust staining left long enough begins to etch, and once it etches no wash removes it: that is correction, a different scope entirely. The first visit after a long gap is really a decontamination, and it takes the time a decontamination takes. Aircraft on a regular interval never reach that point, which is the whole argument for the interval.
Hangar or open ramp
This moves the hours more than owners expect. Inside a hangar nothing dries before it is removed and the airframe can be worked in sensible sections. On an open ramp in July, sun and wind flash product off in minutes, so the work goes panel by panel in small sections, often starting before dawn or waiting for the ramp to cool. Same aircraft, same crew, materially more hours, and a far higher risk of water spotting if anyone rushes it.
The method, and who actually decides it
Dry, rinse-less and wet washing are not interchangeable, and the choice is not always ours to make. Wash-water runoff is an environmental compliance matter that varies by field and by ramp position, and some positions do not permit open washing at all. Where water is restricted, a heavily soiled airframe has to be encapsulated and lifted off in stages with a great many towels. That is the same result reached by a longer road, and the labour reflects it.
Where it is parked and whether it can be moved
A wash needs access to all sides, room for a lift, and a position that is not in the line crew's way. An aircraft nose-in between two others on a busy FBO ramp means a tow, a coordination call and often a wait. PDK is the second busiest general aviation airport in the country and its ramps are full. A position that has to be negotiated is time on the clock before a towel touches the aircraft.
The deadline
A compressed window does not reduce the work, it changes the shape of the crew. Finishing an airframe before a morning departure means more people on it overnight, not fewer hours of washing. Between-legs turns are harder again: the aircraft is hot, passengers may be returning, and everything has to be staged around the line crew and the fuel truck. Rush and AOG dispatch is quoted as rush, in writing, before you commit, and never added to the invoice afterwards.
What the previous vendor left behind
We quote what is on the aircraft, and sometimes that includes the last wash. Swirl marks in the clear coat from towels that went back on after touching the ground. Chalky residue packed into seams and fastener heads. A ring of tyre dressing slung up the lower fuselage. Adhesive from masking tape left in the sun. None of that lifts in a normal wash pass, so removing it is remediation, and it is the most common reason a first visit runs longer than every visit after it.
What the work actually consists of
A walk-around first, photographed, so the condition on arrival is recorded rather than argued about later. Then every static port, probe, pitot tube, vent and sensor is covered, and the covers go on a checklist that is counted back off at handover: nothing is left on the aircraft. A crew of two or more works top down, fin and stabiliser from a lift, upper fuselage, wings, then the lower fuselage, gear legs and wheel wells, which is the part a cheap quote quietly skips. Sections are sized so nothing dries before it is removed, and towels are retired constantly rather than rinsed and reused. Leading edges and the radome get their own treatment for bug strike. Finally seams, fastener heads and flap tracks are checked in raking light for residue.
Questions to put to any vendor
Including us. If a vendor cannot answer these plainly, that tells you more than the number at the bottom of their quote.
- Which wash method will you use on my aircraft, and why that one? The method should follow the airframe's condition and what the field permits for runoff, not what happens to be in the vendor's van. Anyone who offers a single method will eventually tell you a job is impossible when the real answer was a different method.
- What gets covered before you start, and how are the covers accounted for at handover? Static ports, pitot tubes, probes, vents and sensors all need protecting, and every cover has to come off and be counted. A cover left behind is not a cosmetic problem, it is a maintenance event, and a written checklist is the only thing that reliably prevents it.
- Are the belly, gear legs and wheel wells inside this quote? The lower half of the aircraft holds most of the soil and is the most common silent exclusion. A quote that leaves it out is not a lower price for the same work, it is a price for less aircraft.
- How often does a towel or pad come off the aircraft, and what happens to it then? Swirl marks come from re-used media, not from the product. A vendor who cannot answer this, or who rinses towels in one bucket and puts them straight back on the paint, has just told you what your clear coat will look like in raking light.
- Can I see the product data sheets and the approvals listed on them? Household and automotive chemistry does real damage on an airframe. Household glass cleaner attacks acrylic transparencies, and the wrong degreaser in a wheel well strips protective finishes. Aviation products carry documentation. Asking for it takes a minute and it thins the field quickly.
- What are your insurance limits, and will you issue a certificate naming my FBO or hangar? Aviation-specific cover at limits an FBO will accept is what stands between you and a repair bill if a stand touches a winglet. Plenty of low quotes are carried by general liability written for car detailing, which is not the same cover at all.
- What happens if you arrive and the aircraft is worse than I described? The answer tells you whether they quote against a scope or improvise on the day. The good answer is that they show you what they have found, tell you what it adds, and get your agreement before they carry on.
Questions we get
- Can you give me a quote before you see the aircraft?
- Yes, in writing, usually the same day. With the tail, the type, the airport and photographs of the belly and leading edges, we are looking at the same things we would look at on the ramp. What we will not do is give a figure over the phone and then revise it once the crew is standing next to the aircraft.
- Is a wash just a cheaper version of a detail?
- No, it is a different product. A wash removes what is sitting on the paint. Detailing changes the condition of the paint itself, through correction, sealant and brightwork, which is machine work on a finish of finite thickness. Both are legitimate work. Setting one against the other tells you nothing, because they are not the same job.
- Does a dry wash cost more than a wet wash?
- Neither method carries a premium by itself. The hours do. On a lightly soiled airframe the two take about the same time. On one carrying a season of exhaust and pollen, encapsulating that volume of soil takes considerably longer than flowing water would. Often the field's runoff rules decide it before either of us does.
- How often should the aircraft be washed?
- It depends on where it sits and how it flies. An aircraft hangared and flown weekly holds up far longer than one parked outside through a Georgia pollen season. On a recurring interval each visit takes fewer hours, because soil never gets the chance to bond, etch or work into the seams.
- Will an overnight or same-day turn add to the quote?
- Yes, and it will say so on the quote. Rush work means calling a crew in outside normal scheduling, and that is a real cost rather than an opportunistic one. What is not acceptable is a surcharge that appears on the invoice having never been quoted. Ask any vendor about that before you commit.
- Are the belly and wheel wells included?
- In our quotes the lower fuselage, gear legs and wheel wells are in scope and stated as such. Heavy hydraulic or oil contamination is a degreasing scope of its own, and we will call that out separately rather than skip it quietly. Check that line on every quote you receive.
Send the tail number, the type, the airport, whether it will be in a hangar or on the ramp, the date it next flies, and a few photographs: the belly, the leading edges, and the panels behind the engines. That is enough for a written quote with the exclusions stated. If it is a rush or an AOG, say so. We dispatch seven days a week.
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Tail, airport, aircraft type and your deadline. That is enough for a written quote against a written scope.
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