What it costs
How much does turboprop detailing cost?
Two King Air 350s can sit on the same ramp at PDK and be a single-shift job and a three-day job. Turboprop work is scoped in hours, and the hours come from the soot on the nacelles, the paint underneath it, what the last vendor left behind, and how tight the hangar is. You can work out which aircraft you have before anyone quotes you. This page sets out what moves the number on this class, and what a quote has to contain before it means anything.
Why there is no number on this page
Turboprops are the widest class we work on. A Kodiak that lives off a grass strip and a two-year-old TBM 960 that has never sat out in rain are both turboprops, and the work is not comparable. A published figure would hold for one of them. For everyone else it is either short of what the aircraft needs, or it becomes a ceiling and the scope quietly shrinks to fit it, and the stages that get cut are the slow ones, which are the ones protecting the finish. So we quote against a written scope, after a walk-around or photographs. A vendor who quotes before seeing your aircraft is guessing, and the guess is built to protect them.
What actually moves the number
Exhaust soot, and how long it has sat there
On a King Air the stacks exhaust onto the nacelle and stream aft over the wing. On a single-engine PC-12, TBM or Caravan they exhaust onto the cowling and run the length of the fuselage side. Either way the deposit is oily carbon, and every heat cycle bakes it harder into the finish. A wash will not take it off. It takes chemical work and usually machine work, and on an aircraft flown weekly and washed rarely the stain has stopped being on the paint and started being in it. This is the single largest swing in turboprop exterior hours.
De-ice boots on the leading edges
Most of this class de-ices with pneumatic rubber boots along the leading edges. Boots want their own chemistry, and they have to be kept clear of petroleum solvents, wax and silicone dressings. That is masking time and treatment time on every wash, not once a year. If a previous vendor has waxed them, and it happens, because a dressing makes tired rubber look new for a fortnight, that has to come off before anything correct can go on. The boot manufacturer publishes what is approved. Ask a vendor to show you they are working to it.
Which paint you actually have
A large part of the turboprop fleet flying today is older than the technician washing it, and a good deal of it wears single-stage paint that has chalked. Chalked single-stage behaves nothing like a modern clear coat: it wants a slower, wetter cut, and it keeps surrendering pigment onto the pad long after a clear coat would have stopped. The finish moves a quote further than the size of the aircraft does. If someone has already been at it with a rotary, correcting their swirl comes before anything else.
Where it has been operating
Turboprops go where jets do not: grass, gravel, unimproved strips, coastal fields, agricultural country in south Georgia. That shows up underneath. Belly film, gear bays, flap tracks, the inboard flap undersides, and stone rash along the lower fuselage. It is work done on your back with a creeper and a light, it is slow, and it is the first thing a thin quote leaves out. Ask any vendor to photograph the belly before and after, and watch what happens.
Brightwork, and whether it has been kept
Where the paint stops, bare aluminium starts: nacelle and cowl panels, wing root and belly fairings, and the trim around them. It oxidizes continuously and it does not respond to washing. Kept on interval, brightwork is a short mechanical stage. Left for a few seasons it hazes grey and becomes a multi-stage recovery, cut, refine, finish, much of it by hand in the tight radii around fasteners and lap joints. Exhaust stacks are stainless and carry heat tint and baked carbon rather than oxide, which is a different job again. A King Air with neglected stacks and fairings can put more hours into a quote than the wash itself.
The flight deck is a cabin surface
In a single-pilot TBM, M600 or PC-12 the flight deck is the front of the cabin, in full view of whoever is sitting behind it. Yokes, pedestal, switch panels, seat leather, sidewall pockets, and glass displays carrying anti-glare coatings. What those coatings tolerate varies by display manufacturer. Some publish an approved cleaner and a dilution, most rule out ammonia, and all of them rule out a dry cloth with grit in it, so the manual gets read before the cloth comes out. It is slow, careful work and it goes to the most experienced person on the crew, which is why it shows up in the hours.
The hangar, and whether we can get round the aircraft
Turboprops live in community hangars and T-hangars, parked tail to tail with clearance measured in inches. If the aircraft has to be pulled, or two others moved first, that is time before anyone touches a panel. Stand height, floor space for a lift and hangar lighting change the scope as well. You cannot correct paint you cannot see, and flat ramp light hides defects that a hangar lamp at the right angle puts straight in front of you.
Your deadline, and the weather on the day
Whenever you like and a Thursday departure are different jobs. Compressing crew-days into one overnight does not remove hours, it adds people, and it usually means working the aircraft in sections through the night under hangar lighting. Georgia summer matters too. Ramp surface temperature shortens flash times, so a product that needs to dwell dries before it has worked and the panel gets done twice. Booked with notice, the same scope takes fewer hours.
What the work actually consists of
Exterior first, interior last, so nothing that falls out of the cabin lands on finished paint. A full turboprop reset runs to crew-days rather than hours: a lead plus one or two technicians, working the aircraft panel by panel. Wash with static ports, probes, vents and intakes covered, then uncovered and checked off a list at handover. Soot lifted with the mildest chemistry that will move it, stepping up only where it will not. Boots cleaned and treated with boot products and nothing else. Bare metal cut and polished in stages. Belly, gear bays and flap tracks degreased. Then the cabin: carpet extracted without soaking the underlay, leather cleaned and conditioned back to its own sheen, acrylic on dedicated plastic polish, displays on a damp microfibre with a cleaner the display manufacturer allows. Condition photographed before and after.
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 products are going on my de-ice boots, and what are you masking them with? Boots are the fastest surface on a turboprop to ruin and the cleanest question to test a vendor with. Anyone who works this class weekly names a boot-specific cleaner and conditioner without pausing, and knows what the boot manufacturer approves. Anyone who says the same soap is fine everywhere is describing a wash, not a boot program.
- Is my paint single-stage or clear coat, and how did you determine that? The pad, the compound and the machine speed all change with the answer, and so do the hours. A vendor who has not looked, or has not asked which shop painted it and when, is quoting a method before knowing whether it applies to your aircraft.
- What is your plan for the exhaust staining, and what happens if it does not fully come off? Soot is the line that most often turns a fixed quote into an argument at handover. You want the escalation sequence described before work starts, and you want to hear the words "some of this may be in the paint" if that is the honest reading.
- Who is physically on the aircraft, who is leading, and for how long? A named lead who owns the handover is a different thing from whoever was free that morning. Ask how many are coming and how long they are staying, then set that against the hours the quote implies. If the arithmetic does not work, the scope will be cut on the day.
- Send me your certificate of insurance, including hangarkeepers, with the limits on it. Your FBO or hangar landlord almost certainly requires a COI on file before anyone works airside, and aviation-specific cover is not the same thing as a general liability policy. If a vendor hesitates on this one, none of the other answers matter.
- What is excluded? The exclusions are the quote. Prop and spinner, wheel wells, nacelle interiors, headliner, seat tracks, lavatory, flight deck. A short quote is usually short because things are missing from it, and the standard way to find out which is at handover, when you are already late.
- If I am not happy at handover, what happens before you leave the airport? The answer tells you whether the crew is empowered to put it right on the spot, or whether you will be emailing an office about an aircraft that has already departed. Get that answer written into the quote rather than agreed in conversation.
Questions we get
- Is a turboprop a smaller job than a jet?
- Not reliably. A turboprop carries less surface area than a mid-size jet and more work on most of it: exhaust staining down the fuselage, de-ice boots, brightwork, and often older paint. Condition sets the scope, not category. A hangar-kept PC-12 can scope lighter than a Citation. A King Air that works for a living rarely does.
- Can you tell me anything before you see the aircraft?
- Yes. Send photographs of the nacelles, the fuselage aft of the exhaust, a leading edge boot and the cabin, plus the tail number and your deadline. From that we can tell you the shape of the job and what the open questions are, usually the same day. The written quote follows the walk-around.
- Do you polish propeller blades?
- No. A propeller is a maintenance item. Blade surfaces, erosion protection and balance belong to your shop rather than to a detailer. We clean blades and spinners and we stop there. If a vendor offers to polish a blade, ask which manual section they are working to.
- How long will my aircraft be out of service?
- A wash is a single visit inside a working day. A full reset on a King Air 350 or a PC-12 is measured in crew-days, and you get that window in writing before we start. If you need it back sooner we add crew rather than cut stages, and the quote says which.
- Does ceramic coating reduce what I spend on washing?
- It changes what a wash has to do. Coated paint releases exhaust soot and ramp film with far less mechanical work, and mechanical work is where turboprop wash hours actually go. It does not remove the need to wash, and it is only worth applying over corrected paint. Coating chalked single-stage locks the defect in.
Send the tail number, the airport, the type and the date it has to be ready. Add photographs of the nacelles, the fuselage aft of the exhaust, a leading edge boot and the cabin if you have them. That is enough for a scoped, written quote. If the honest answer is that your aircraft needs less than you asked for, we will say so.
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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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