Category: BizJet

XEOS, the new aircraft engine service center located in Sroda Slaska near Wrocław, Poland celebrated its official opening in September 2019. The company is a joint venture of Lufthansa Technik (51%) and GE Aviation (49%) and is a service center for GEnx-2B and GE9X engines.

It was built in 16 months, a record Lufthansa Technik says. The first commercial engine was accepted for repair in April 2019. By the end of this year about 20 engines will have been inducted for service there. And by 2023 the companies say the plant will repair more than 200 engines per year.

The grand opening ceremony was attended by representatives of the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland and the Polish government as well as Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany Rolf Nikel and Christian Cardona, Political and Economic Consul of the US General Consulate. Carsten Spohr, CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board of Deutsche Lufthansa, Dr. Johannes Bussmann, CEO of Lufthansa Technik, David Joyce, Vice Chair, GE and President & CEO, GE Aviation and Jean Lydon-Rodgers, President and CEO, GE Aviation Service.

“For decades, Lufthansa Technik has been known as a center of excellence in the maintenance, repair, and overhaul business of engines and engine components,” said Dr. Johannes Bussmann, CEO of Lufthansa Technik. “The successful opening of the XEOS engine shop with our partner GE is a cornerstone for our long-term growth strategy to offer comprehensive MRO services also for the latest generations of aircraft engines.” The JV partners invested about $250 million to construct the facility. in total.

In conjunction with the U.S. Department of Commerce $12.25 million grant to help establish a new aircraft maintenance training facility at the Pensacola International Airport, ST Engineering hosted a hiring event for their expanding facility in Pensacola. ST Engineering is trying to fill open aircraft mechanic positions and says they hope to attract people in the area with military background

At the event retired Marine Phil Jackson said he was trying to get back into the aviation industry. Jackson believes they won’t have a hard time finding qualified candidates in the panhandle area of Florida. “Having this additional employer in the area in the business of aviation is great, between the Navy and Marine Corps, all the instructors and mechanics that come through here, I think they are not going to have any problems finding people,” said Jackson.

ST Engineering representatives at the hiring event told applicants that even those without an A&P or other certifications may still have luck with certain job openings.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced that the Department’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) is awarding a $12.25 million grant to the city of Pensacola, Florida, to make critical infrastructure improvements needed to establish a maintenance training facility at Pensacola International Airport. The EDA grant, to be matched with more than $36 million in state and local investment, is expected to help create 400 jobs.

“The new maintenance training facility being built with the help of this grant will prepare students for careers in the commercial aviation industry while also making the region’s economy more resilient in the face of future natural disasters,” says Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross.

“I welcome the Department of Commerce’s investment to establish a maintenance training facility at Pensacola International Airport,” says Senator Marco Rubio. “This important investment in Pensacola’s infrastructure will help to create hundreds of new jobs and opportunities for dignified work, as well as uplift the local economy.”

This project will fund the construction of a 173,000 square-foot airport hangar, along with adjacent taxi ways and related infrastructure, at Pensacola International Airport. Designed to withstand 170 mph winds, the facility will support state-of-the-art maintenance, repair and overhaul operations, and provide a training center for commercial and technological aviation programs. This project was made possible by the regional planning efforts led by the West Florida Regional Planning Council.

One year after the acquisition of Thomson Aerospace & Defense, the pioneering name in aviation ball screw actuation, UMBRAGROUP continues its path of growth and innovation as it inaugurated a new state of the art MRO operation in its Saginaw, Michigan plant. The ribbon cutting and grand opening took place in October and marks another step for UMBRAGROUP in providing expanded services to their customers.

“This new Repair and Overhaul center is a wonderful achievement for UMBRAGROUP,” states Antonio Baldaccini, CEO and president UMBRAGOUP. “It allows us to offer expanded capabilities with excellent service closer to our customers in the target market of North America.” Thomson Aerospace & Defense essentially pioneered aviation ball screw actuation in the early 1940’s, and with their decades of related MRO experience, UMBRAGROU says they were the logical choice for their strategic initiatives. “This inauguration marks another milestone for UMBRAGROUP in revolutionizing motion solutions for our aerospace and defense customers.”

The MRO business in Saginaw is expected to grow revenues to more than $13 million in 2020, which is just one example of the many investments UMBRAGROUP is planning for the Thomson Aerospace & Defense business in Saginaw. During the next four to five years, the company intends to invest as much as $20 million for plant and equipment modernization. The group says they are “always ready for new challenges and growth opportunities in today’s highly dynamic and competitive global context.”

Honeywell and Lufthansa Technik are collaborating “to bring new level of predictive health management expertise to airlines. They say they will do this by offering Honeywell Forge for Airlines and Lufthansa Technik maintenance analytics on the AVIATAR platform. The companies says this will help airline operators increase the availability of their aircraft and reduce costs associated with operations, flight delays, and cancellations.

The collaboration will create a comprehensive data analytics solution for airlines — from the data pipe, to a platform that digitizes maintenance data, to realized benefits based on analytics and predictive tools.

“We are working to provide the world’s airlines and other stakeholders in the industry with access to a comprehensive digital operations suite that will ultimately reduce operational costs, improve maintenance turnaround times, and get planes into the sky faster,” says Dr. Christian Langer, vice president Digital Fleet Solutions at Lufthansa Technik. “We live in a data-driven world, and the more Lufthansa Technik can support better data analysis for maintenance and other services, the better it is for our customers. The inclusion and collaboration of Honeywell Forge analytics with the Lufthansa Technik offering will further foster that development to help improve airlines’ operations at scale.”

New aircraft can produce 50 times more data than many older aircraft still in service. That increase in data volume leads to greater complexity, but also provides significant opportunities to increase safety and efficiency. The data not only needs to be stored – it must be sorted, analyzed, interpreted, and translated into meaningful insights and actionable recommendations. Honeywell and Lufthansa Technik, two of the leading maintenance, repair and overhaul service providers in the world, excel at that translation from data to insight. With inclusion of the Honeywell Forge analytics on the AVIATAR platform, customers can broaden their aircraft component coverage and depth, thus enabling customers to make faster and better operational decisions.

“Combining the power of Honeywell Forge Connected Maintenance with the capability of AVIATAR provides a new option for airlines looking for a total aircraft digital maintenance solution,” says Jim Currier, president, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and India Sales at Honeywell, Aerospace. “Honeywell and Lufthansa Technik bring decades of experience with aircraft maintenance to this digital experience. This results in opportunities for airlines to reduce minimum equipment list failures by up to 35 percent while reducing flight cancellations or delays due to maintenance.”

Avotek released an updated title to its avionics series, Avionics: Beyond the AET second edition. The avionics series consists of four titles, with Beyond the AET coming in as the second book. Its main purpose is preparing students to pass their NCATT Radio Communication Systems, Dependent Navigation Systems, and Autonomous Navigation Systems tests.

The textbook, originally written in 2012 by Tom Inman, serves a very important role within the avionics series. However, as technology progressed, portions of the book slowly became more out of date. Inman realized this and took action. With Avotek helping out, Inman updated the textbook.

Updates for the second edition include the latest in radio communication theory and practice, the latest in aviation dependent navigation systems (specifically GBAS and GLS), added new terminology, illustrations and photos, index terms, glossary definitions, and more. Outdated material was replaced with what is most current.

Avionics: Beyond the AET second edition can be purchased on the Avotek website or over the phone for $54.95. Avotek offers the textbook in three formats: a downloadable PDF, a web-based interactive eBook, and paperback.

Duncan Aviation hosted a Registered Apprenticeship Ceremony to roll out its newly registered Duncan Aviation Airframe Technician Apprenticeship Program. The ceremony was a fitting mid-week celebration of National Apprenticeship Week.

“The aviation industry is currently seeing a workforce shortage for qualified aircraft technicians as the number of retiring certified Airframe Technicians is higher than the number of young adults expressing interest in the field of aircraft mechanics,” explains Todd Duncan, Chairman of Duncan Aviation. “In response, Duncan Aviation is educating young adults about the joys of choosing business aviation as a career and looking at new and different ways to introduce talented and motivated individuals to the company and the industry.”

Registered apprenticeships benefit communities and the workforce by providing on-the-job training that gives participants a clear career path and national credential from the U. S. Department of Labor through an earn-as-you-learn program. Jeremy Rangel, Duncan Aviation airframe manager, says, “The work-based learning strategy helps Duncan Aviation increase team member skills and engagement while developing the company’s future leaders.”

Duncan Aviation has offered apprenticeships, or full-time careers that include on-the-job training and instruction, to interested candidates for the last few years. By on-boarding new team members as Tech Helpers, experienced technicians would offer guidance and on-the-job training. No formal instruction program was in place, Rangel says. “Though it was successful, we identified areas of theoretical and practical training that would yield better results through standardization. That is exactly what we did, working with the US Department of Labor and the Nebraska Department of Labor. We now have a true pathway to help new team members become knowledgeable, well-rounded aircraft technicians.” This formalized apprenticeship program has now been nationally registered with the US Department of Labor and the Department of Education.

The classroom instruction and hands-on lab training developed for the program has heightened our training effectiveness to the next level, says Matt Stolz, airframe shift supervisor. “The Registered Apprenticeship Program at Duncan Aviation is designed to provide those who enroll in it a streamlined and focused approach to training for the FAA Airframe Technician certificate. The program carries with it Duncan Aviation’s reputation for quality, knowledge, and leadership in the business jet world.”

Currently, Duncan Aviation has 24 apprentices who are working full-time while learning and preparing for their Airframe Technician certification test. They have up to 24 months from joining the program to earn their certificate.

West Star Aviation has partnered with Madison County Career and Technical Education Office, along with Southwestern Illinois College (SWIC) for a Federal Apprenticeship Event for National Apprenticeship Week at their East Alton, IL (ALN) facility on November 14 and 15, 2019.  This event will allow students to inquire about aviation maintenance careers and explore the local opportunities available with the new AMT Apprenticeship Program, in conjunction with the two-year Aviation Maintenance Technology program at SWIC.

The event will include a lunch, facility tour, presentation and commentary from current West Star employees working as Apprentices while attending SWIC, as well as management, plus college life details from SWIC’s enrollment specialist, typical daily routine, learning experiences, required supplies and cost information.

“We are excited to be able to share this real-life experience with students in the area.  It allows them to explore the true working environment where they can complete their degrees and graduate with a secure job in the local area,” says Katie Johnson, vice president of Human Resources. “We are always looking for ways to expand our hiring programs while exposing potential graduates to the corporate aviation industry, thus gaining the most experienced technicians and offering them an extended career with West Star,” Johnson continued.