At jet engine maker GE Aviation's Hooksett factory near Manchester, N.H., thinking global means adapting someone else's idea to create a winning combination of reduced tooling and production costs for hard-to-machine superalloys. The story started in 2001 at GE Global Research in Niskayuna, N.Y., which passed on some intel from GE Global Research-Shanghai to Mike Lamphere about the way the Chinese were using electric discharge to speed up drilling of machined parts.
ExoStar named Richard Addi president and CEO. Addi had filled the role on an interim basis and was CFO prior to that. He previously was VP finance at Rolls-Royce-SAIC joint venture Data Systems & Solutions.
Lufthansa Technik Aero Alzey will provide technical services for some of JetBlue's more than 200 CF34-10E engines over the next three years under a non-exclusive contract signed in April.
Fokker Aircraft Services will provide nose-to-tail maintenance and C checks for five Germania Airlines Boeing 737s. Following maintenance, three of the aircraft will go into Fokker Aircraft Services' Boeing storage program, and two will return to service until October, when they too are scheduled to go into storage. Engines
Fokker Services and Lufthansa Technik in May agreed to provide joint support for Boeing, Airbus and Bombardier components, including a range of pneumatic, hydraulics and avionics components, for the next five years. A separate purchase agreement covers the delivery of PMA piece parts for use in Lufthansa Technik repairs.
Lufthansa Technik offers seat refurbishment and overhaul services as options alongside heavy checks at its maintenance facilities in Frankfurt, Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, as well as European affiliates in Brussels and Malta. Capabilities include the Airbus A320 family, A330 and A340 and Boeing 737-300/-500 and 747-200/-400. www.lufthansa-technik.com
SR Technics landed its first long-term contract in the Philippines: It will maintain 18 Cebu Pacific CFM56-5B engines in Zurich under a 10-year, $52 million deal. Avionics/IFE
Belac shipped its 50,000th parts manufacturer approval high-pressure turbine blade in April to a customer in Europe. The joint venture of Chromalloy, Lufthansa and United Airlines began manufacturing and shipping the components in 2002.
Mxi Technologies' Maintenix software went live at LAN Airlines in April. Maintenix replaced LAN'an's legacy VISaer system and more than 20 internal sub-systems.
Regent Seating Division offers complete overhaul and refurbishment of aircraft seats with its line of PMA parts for arm caps, tray tables and seat belts. It can install new fabric and leather seat cushions and dress covers as well as plan complete cabin reconfigurations. Regent is headquartered in Valencia, Calif., with a 90,000-sq.-ft. facility, and it has repair stations around the world. www.regentaerospace.com
Barfield will provide avionics, hydraulic, instrument, accessories and cockpit seat component maintenance for Boeing and Airbus aircraft to US Airways from its Tempe, Ariz., facility under an April contract.
Pratt & Whitney and PAS Technologies signed a long-term agreement making PAS Technologies a designated service provider for select repairs on Pratt & Whitney PW2000 and PW4000 and IAE V2500 engine families at its Hillsboro, Ohio, and Kansas City, Mo., facilities.
Elixair International's SkyFamily is a system of sealant removal products designed to tackle both cured and partially cured polysulphides. SkyWipes are used to remove wet and tacky polysulphides and come in packages of 300 or 100 solvent-free wipes. They are non-hazardous and do not require additional hand protection. They are used with SkyWash, a solvent-free surface cleaner. The package also includes SkyRestore, a thixotropic gel, which allows cured sealant to be scraped off with SkyScrapes.
Only three MROs—ST Aerospace, the Haeco group and Sabena technics—increased their total airframe maintenance man-hours in this year's Top 10 airframe MRO survey (pg. 22), compared to the last biennial one published in June 2009. The Haeco group (comprising Haeco, Staeco and Taeco for our survey) topped the gains with about 600,000 additional man-hours. On the flip side, many subtracted 500,000 airframe maintenance man-hours last year, with a few dropping more than 1 million man-hours, which I don't think you can categorize as simply a “shift.”
Commsoft won a deal to provide its Open Aviation Strategic Engineering System (Oases) to Latvia's SmartLynx Airlines under a five-year, 15-concurrent user deal. SmartLynx planned to go live with Oases to manage its eight Airbus A320s in May.
Delta TechOps received FAA Part 145 certification for its pre-merger Northwest Airlines hangars at Minneapolis-St. Paul in January, and Delta TechOps inducted its first customer aircraft, a North American Airlines' Boeing 757, there in April for an A check, says Tony Charaf, Delta TechOps' president. “Detroit (DTW) is next,” he says.
LONDON—The European Aviation Safety Agency EASA is considering an innovative proposal that would allow commercial operators to outsource their continuous airworthiness management organization (CAMO) functions, enabling them to adopt, for example, Boeing's Goldcare maintenance model for Boeing 787 and 737NG operators. Boeing, which has CAMO approval, could manage its European-based 787 fleet from a central organization that would provide operators with airworthy 787s. Boeing staff would run the CAMO, while operators would use aircraft from a pool.
Pratt & Whitney formally launched its PureSolution service program for the PurePower engine family. (For more information, see O&M, April 2011, pg. 66.)
SR Technics signed a five-year, $36 million integrated component support contract with Garuda Indonesia to support its Boeing 737NG fleet as well as the Airbus A330s covered under existing agreements. The new contract covers 455 part numbers in Zurich, plus SR Technics-owned stock in Jakarta that Garuda will use on a lease basis.
At one point or another, we all find ourselves looking around the house for misplaced car keys or a business card with an important phone number on it. Usually, these things turn up, and the consequence of carelessness is no more than wasted time. But in a maintenance hangar, forgotten tools can transform into foreign object debris (FOD) that can cause serious damage if left behind in an aircraft.
Alaska Airlines launched a new inflight entertainment option in April: touchscreen, handheld digEplayer devices that let passengers access new-release movies, television programs, the National Football League network, ReelzChannel Hollywood programming and games. Customers also can pay a fee to use the device to connect to Alaska's Gogo inflight internet. Alaska debuted the system, which is lighter than its predecessor, in 2003. It is available on most flights longer than 3 hr.
Dean Baldwin Painting plans to nearly double in size with a new location north of Indianapolis. It is investing around $10.5 million to transform a hangar complex at Grissom Aeroplex in Peru, Ind., into a state-of-the-art paint facility. When the project is complete, the site will have two widebody and two narrowbody bays. Operations should launch at the new site in December.
PAS Technologies added Brian Meyer as general manager of its Miramar, Fla., facility. Meyer joins PAS Technologies from AAR Landing Gear Systems, where he most recently held the role of VP engineering. Airframes
