Cole Aviation is a highly recommended and respected shop in the Mooney community. Joe Cole, the owner, no longer does any advertising and his business thrives on the reputation of his work and word of mouth referrals from his many satisfied clients. I am now one of them. This is my first experience with Cole Aviation performing an annual inspection on the Mooney M20M I've owned for 11 years. I am completely satisfied with the work they did, including the list of squawks I asked them to address and the communication throughout. They completed the work in the promised amount of time. Jeff, the A&P working on my airplane, did a great job. He and Joe replaced all of the landing gear pucks, installed new brake rotors and linings, fixed a TKS leak, stopped an oil leak on my #2 cylinder, and found and repaired a couple of leaking gaskets that were causing a fuel smell in the cockpit. Just an indicator of the attention to quality work, he installed zerk caps on all of my grease fittings. I didn't ask for those, it was just a nice touch. They determined my turbocharger had seen better days and suggested I might be able to get another 500 hours out of it, but I opted to have it overhauled. They handled all of the shipping, R&R, and setup with no issues. The parts costs, shop rate and labor hours charged for the work were very reasonable. My post-maintenance inspection found no loose screws, panels, or leaks. Joe did two separate comprehensive engine runs and I was able to verify the data from both showed nominal engine performance before I did my post- annual check flight and flight home. A very positive experience. I highly recommend Cole Aviation. read more

I thought Joey Cole (Owner of Cole Aviation) at first was a great person and mechanic. I had never purchased an aircraft before and I am not the most mechanically inclined individual. I put my trust in him as a person and a mechanic. I got burned to say the least. I brought him a 1995 Mooney M20J MSE for a pre-purchase/Annual inspection. He assured me this was a great airplane and nothing had been found in the annual except for a burnt out strobe and some minor things that I wanted to fix that was not airworthy. I was very happy to hear that the plane was in good shape and proceeded to purchase the airplane. A month later I experienced a vacuum failure. It turns out the cause of the failure was a vacuum filter that had a hole in it, covered in duct tape. Something had gotten in the hole and had taken out the pump and a few hoses. Printed on the filter is a label that says that it is mandatory for the filter to be changed at annual. The date printed on the filter was from 2 years ago. Part of the annual inspection is that the filters be inspected and changed. This of course never happened and ultimately cost me thousands of dollars. that should have been caught when Mr. Cole did the annual. This is not the only issue. I had also asked Mr. Cole to check the brakes for me during the annual as the brakes seem to be needing replacement. I cannot see the pads because they are covered with hub covers. I was told that is how mooney's brakes feel and that he looked at them and they were fine. Well that wasn't true either. There were no pads left at all. It was metal on metal with big gouges eating into the rotors. Well that wound up costing a lot of money as well. Next problem I encountered was that not all the ad's were checked. My engine was running rough and losing power as well as my temperature gauges going crazy. I brought the plane into a reputable mechanic and was told that the fuel server bolt was falling off and never changed and that there is an ad for this very issue. The new bolt should be stamped with a "G" and was not. This was causing an extremely dangerous situation that could have ended with an accident. Mr. Cole ultimately denies any wrong doing but I have pictures to prove everything I am saying. So please take it from me, go somewhere else. If you happen to live in the Georgia area there are many other options available to you. I would never bring or trust my plane at Cole aviation ever again. read more