At 87, Ed Cervantes supports GA one airplane at a time

By Yves A. Didier

“Sure we’ll do your annual,” the friendly shop owner tells me over the phone and his voice sounds suspiciously cheerful. “We’ll need 40 hours.”

Wait, so at $125 an hour, that will be $5,000 for an annual? Yup, and that’s just for starters, as any unexpected squawk will be extra.

Sounds reasonable to me — if I were flying a King Air, F-16, or some other sexy bird. But looking at my almost 60-year-old Cessna 172, “sexy” is not what immediately comes to mind. How about basic, analog, or vintage instead? Heck, my bird doesn’t even have electric flaps, about the only thing truly sexy about most legacy Skyhawks.

I’m stunned about the quote, but after getting similar ones from other nearby shops (what are they smoking?), I finally reach out to the previous owner of my basic, analog, vintage 172. Perhaps he knows an A&P who won’t ask for my firstborn child in return for an annual.

“Call this number,” he tells me a day later. “This dude’s old school. Tons of experience but he won’t charge you an arm and a leg like those other guys.”

So I pick up the phone and call Ed.

I’m sure you’ve heard or read about someone in the past who always aspired to be a (insert: brain surgeon, astronaut, architect, Nobel Peace Price winner, or whatever), and he or she would not rest before that goal was ultimately achieved. 

Great story. 

But it’s not Ed’s.

Born between the stock market crash of 1929 and the great recession, Ed Cervantes didn’t have any lofty dreams or career goals like that as a kid. He couldn’t afford to.

Instead, early on the expectation was for him to help out in his father’s auto repair shop in Los Angeles, fixing cars and doing bodywork, “purely out of necessity,” he recalls.

While he clearly had a talent for it, immediately after graduating from high school, Ed enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. 

There, his passion for working on aircraft came with time, not overnight. Certified as a mechanic in August 1954, he was shipped off to Japan shortly, then sent to Korea. What followed was a whirlwind of assignments all over the world, with Ed working on F-86s, F-80s, F-84s, and upon his return to the U.S., on C-97s and C-130s.

After signing up with the Air National Guard, stationed out of Van Nuys, California, he continued to fly and work on C-130s, whether in Hawaii, Panama, or elsewhere around the globe. There were plenty of trips to Central America, from where his crew frequently returned with pallets of coffee.

“Sharing the goods with our friends and neighbors, we were quite popular,” he remembers with a smile.

Not to mention those missions to Greece, Spain, and the Azores, which resulted in generous loads of wine that found their way back to the States. 

Not all flights went without a glitch, though. When the C-130 he was assigned to as a flight engineer got stuck on a remote runway in Alaska with a brake problem, it was time to get creative. With no spare parts available for days, Ed modified a discarded beer can’s pull tab to replace a worn-out brake part. It worked like a charm.

“It was very cold out there,” he says with a shrug. “We were really motivated to get home.”

Since 1993, the planes Ed’s been working on have shrunk significantly in size.

While retiring from the military was one thing, leaving his love for aircraft behind was unthinkable. So after just three weeks of studying, the married father of two passed his A&P exam and started his own business, Ed’s Mobile Aircraft Maintenance. 

Whiteman Airport (KWHP) in Los Angeles continues to be his base, but he will come out to your field too, as long as it’s in the LA area, for instance, in Santa Monica, Santa Paula, Camarillo, or El Monte. He even has one client out in Mariposa County, almost five hours north of LA, “but after so many years, he’s no longer a client, but a friend,” Ed shares. 

While keeping up with ever-changing FAA rules and regulations can drive anybody mad, the close relationship with his customers and their planes is what Ed thrives on.

However, it’s not always rainbows and unicorns. A shop owner, who promised to pay him after the pandemic, disappeared overnight. The monetary loss — almost a year’s pay — weighed heavily on Ed, but not as much as the sense of betrayal within the tight-knit GA community.

He could go to the police, of course, but at age 87, he has more important things to do. That T-34 over there has a rough running engine, John’s Comanche needs an oil change, and then there’s my plane’s annual too.

Being mobile, Ed isn’t on the hook for astronomical shop and hangar rent, and he passes those savings on to his customers, who naturally love him for it. Generally, he enjoys working on all things Piper, Beech, Cessna, and Mooney, but avoids composites and high wing retractables.

“On stands, with the gear extended, it’s just up too high for comfort,” he says.

He also will no longer crawl underneath your instrument panel to troubleshoot some electronic wizardry. He’s no Houdini after all, and his body doesn’t allow it anymore. (When was the last time you tried that? I personally gave up those yoga moves 20 years ago and don’t blame him a bit).

If Ed Cervantes could turn back time, he wouldn’t change a thing, he says.

Well, except for one: “I never had the money nor the time to get my pilot’s license. And by now it’s probably a little too late.”

Still, he continues to support GA, one plane at a time.

So what about retiring? Not so fast, he says.

“I’ll call it a day when they close that lid on me,” he says.