I Spent nearly 6 years on a resident route at a university and about 2 1/2 years on a service route. They both have their perks.The larger airports that have resident mechanics normally have more than 1 mechanic.If that's the case, then its nice to have a second set of hands for an awkward task that you would normally have to do yourself. If you have a good rapport with your customer then you will have access to their machine shop/key shop etc. Resident routes typically have substantially less units than the current industry norm of 200 for a service route. If you are on a service route with 200 or so units then you have a lot of customer personalities to deal with. A resident route has one customer to deal with, which can be great or terrible depending on the customer's demeanor. The people at the university treated me far better than the elevator company,but you 're also a caged bird. Sometimes, I just wanted some different scenery. What your buddy's comfort level with escalators/moving walks? If an airport is large enough to support a full time mechanic then it surely has escalators/moving walks. That would be a deal breaker for me. I'd rather have 5 bad elevators than one good escalator. The right resident route is a beautiful thing. The wrong one is a prison sentence.
Last edited by Elevated; 12/14/13 02:10 AM.