Jose Rodrigo Llamas has always liked working on cars and small gas engines. His dad was a mechanic and machinist. “Growing up in my neighborhood, we were right under a popular flight path, so I would look up and see the planes. I would watch them so much that after a while I could tell how many engines they had.” When his dad bought him a book that showed him all the popular GA aircraft, he studied them. After a while, he said, “I could tell their model by their silhouettes. I often told myself I would be a pilot, since that's the glamorous side of the industry. I learned that being a pilot was expensive, and I needed to be really good at math. Well, at the time, I wasn’t good at math so I put that dream away.”
In his senior year of high school, he learned about the possibility of being an A&P mechanic. “That's when I got excited again,” he said. “I already knew how to wrench and working on aircraft just feels so much more prestigious than working on anything else.” At the Aviation Institute of Maintenance in Oakland, California, he said he had an awesome group of instructors and a few great classmates.
His mentors are many.
“My first mentor taught me the importance of being dependable, patient and consistent. His name is Ramin and I learned all that working at his restaurant,” he said.
“Second, was the whole maintenance crew at Attitude Aviation. This is where I learned how to fix my mistakes, ask questions, stay quiet and absorb. This is also where I got my first good chewing and the crew helped me get over it. After that, chewings weren’t so bad and they rolled right off my back.
“Third, was a tight wallet I/A. He has a small shop, where he does pretty amazing work, but he lacks patience for new A&P's and expects them to work lighting fast, ask no questions and accept outdated maintenance data. Here, I learned a ton of little tricks of the trade, troubleshooting and what kind of mechanic I don’t want to be. Thankfully, he let me go since I worked too slow for him and caused him to hemorrhage money.”
“Finally, fourth and not last, is the crew I work with now. This is a crew of managers, pilots and mechanics on other teams. They all individually teach me something different. Some teach me leadership, finances, researching data and FARs. I feel at home with this job and truly feel blessed coming in every day.”
Rodrigo Llamas is the only mechanic working a fleet of six Cessnas: three 172S, two T206H and one 206H.
