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Why your Prius dose not get the same repair and diagnostic treatment as a Helicopter or Airplane. When I work on a helicopter or airplane its a whole different level of diagnostics & repair procedures, No leaving tools behind under the hood, no leaving bolts, nuts, screws loose. At the end of your job if you have one or more extra fasteners left over, you just do not hide them off to the side or in you pocket and not tell the boss, as what happens many times in the automotive repair industry. I can not even think of counting how many time i'v seen a car come back to a shop on a tow truck. Leaking coolant out, leaking oil out, leaking transmission fluid, wheel came loose or fall off. clamp on a gas line loose leaked on to the exhaust manifold and caught fire. The list goes on for a 1000 more things. Well for one is cost, the others is lack of training , some shops only look for a warn body with a hart beat and most of the time shows up on time. ( im not talking about good shops and owners.) Some shop owners never worked on cars or did 20+ years ago for a few months only, and can not even diagnosis them selves out of a wet paper bag! and have a attitude this is only a cash cow business and you the customer, your wallet is their own personal bank ATM. Just think if the automotive shop owners with no moral or ethical automotive pride in their work other then to make a buck were allowed to repair your aircraft. It would be raining planes out of the sky's on a daily basis. Take this helicopter for example i'm repairing the the air conditioning, For every hour it is down, is $800 a hour rental, then my time at $120 hour, plus the FAA aviation mechanic who sets up the helicopter and opens up every thing so I can check and test every thing front to back top to bottom and he has to check off and look and touch every thing I do to. Not to mention the helicopter pilot that has to wait here next to me the whole time, to fire this baby up when I say to and some times more then once over a period of hours. I have to use a torque wrench on every a/c line and bolt then put a bright yellow thick paint line over the nut , bolt, line or any other fasteners I touch and it all get logged down in a repair log. In this photo the a/c compressor above my hands in the engine compartment is a Sanden same as used in cars and trucks ( almost ) the difference is that gets that little FAA epoxied on tag it was tested and SPEC out and approved for FAA use. That $250 compressor is now $2500 and every part on this craft is the same. As what happens many time in unqualified automotive TECHs attempting a/c repair will do, if they make a mistake and burn up the customers compressor they will just return the compressor back to the warehouse and say it was a DEFECT ! ??. NO WAY CAN WE DO THAT IN AVIATION !!!. WE would just have a $2500 paper weight. The compressor is attached by a belt to the tail rotor shaft. When the condenser fan went out the pressure went so high as to slow down the rotor and rob power from the engine, the pilot thought he was going down into the SF bay water, because of the air conditioning. Here we have a $2+million dollar helicopter with up to 6 lives flying , there is no AAA tow helicopter waiting for a air craft to pull over to the side up there. Later I will post a list of some of the most trustworthy, competent shops that treat your car as if it was their own and it was their family that was in your car. Over the last 20 years that I have been in hundreds of shop there is only a few I would bring my car to or trust to send a family members car to here in the San Francisco Bay area.