The A&P who built a business while logging flight hours

That doesn't mean it was easy. He worked three jobs, chased scholarships other students never applied for, and took a detour when his original flight-school plans fell apart. Instead of slowing down, he used the opportunity to explore the A&P route.

Growing up on a farm in Waumandee, Wisconsin, a neighboring farmer kept a Taylorcraft in a hayfield next to his family's property. "I was maybe eight years old," he recalled. "I was fascinated by watching him take off and land." The farmer used the airplane to check his fields, and the strip lined up so that his departures and arrivals passed over Krzyszton's family farm. One day, his neighbor invited him along. "From that moment, I knew that this is what I was going to do," he said.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Krzyszton completed Sporty's online ground school and trained one-on-one with an instructor at a small FAR Part 61 flight school. After earning his private pilot certificate, he began looking for the next step. At first the plan was to attend A&P school, transfer the credits into the University of North Dakota's aviation program, and then continue through a Part 141 path. Then the transfer program shut down.

By this time, Krzyszton was already committed to maintenance, and he liked it. The time he spent on the farm had given him a mechanical foundation from years of fixing farm equipment, so he stayed with A&P school and continued flight training on his own timeline. To pay for it, he worked. "I kind of worked like a dog, to be honest," he said. During the week, he worked nights as a line technician at the airport. On weekends, he worked 12-hour shifts in hospital security. He also applied for scholarships, including some he did not think he qualified for. "A lot of people just didn't apply for them," he said. "There were ones that I would not qualify for, but I'd still apply." He found additional opportunities through museum scholarship programs that aren't listed as prominently on aviation websites.

The A&P training changed the way he understood flying, and the two skill sets compounded each other. He found having the mechanical knowledge helps out immensely on the piloting side and vice versa. Krzyszton pointed to an example of a burnt-out light bulb as a friction point between maintenance focused on airworthiness and pilots focused on what they actually need in the air. Understanding both sides, he said, helps the two meet in the middle. That dual perspective became the foundation for AircraftMD.

After graduating from A&P school, Krzyszton was hired by a small cargo company flying converted Dassault Falcon 20s. The schedule was two weeks on and two weeks off. After years of school, work, and training, suddenly having two open weeks felt strange—so he started using that time to work as a mobile A&P.

At first, the jobs were local. Then word spread. He began doing prepurchase inspections and combining them with ferry flights, taking him across the country. Everywhere he went, he saw the same problem: not enough mechanics, too many airplanes waiting, and shop owners who wanted to retire with no one to pass their knowledge down to. "No matter where you go across the nation, it seems like the same exact story exists: There's way more need than there are people," he said.

Driving between maintenance jobs took too much time, and the phone kept ringing. Krzyszton needed a faster way to reach stranded airplanes and owners waiting on repairs.

His 1965 Mooney M20E gave him that. "It does about 160 knots true in cruise at nine or ten gallons an hour," he said. "It's tough to beat." Now when a client calls, the answer depends on the job. Smaller repairs can often be handled quickly. If parts are needed, he tries to overnight them directly to the airplane's location and meet them there.

The biggest bottleneck, he said, is parts availability, a piece of the larger maintenance problem he hopes to solve. Krzyszton is now thinking beyond mobile maintenance to building systems that make general aviation more efficient and accessible to the next generation of A&Ps.

"I do want to try and figure out a way to solve the GA maintenance crisis," he said. One idea is a franchise model for A&P shops, giving mechanics across the country a more standardized business model and system they can plug into. "Aviation is still stuck in the '70s and '80s. There's a lot of room to improve by bringing everything up to modernization."

For now, Krzyszton is focused on the work in front of him and showing other young people there is more than one way to build a life in aviation. "I think a lot of people tend to put the blinders on and say airlines, airlines, airlines," he said. "But you miss a lot of other avenues and opportunities by doing that."