EBACE Show News - May 21, 2008 - (Page 42)

EBACE 2008 Yet More Airbus ACJs for JetAlliance Vienna-based JetAlliance has bumped up its Airbus Corporate Jet order book for the third year running with a $185 million deal for one new ACJ and two new A318 Elites. JetAlliance Group CEO Lukas Lichtner-Hoyer said his company had moved from being an aircraft management firm to a “lifestyle provider” as it takes on the complete purchasing, management, financing and operations role for customers who demand a turnkey product at the very top end of the business jet market. JetAlliance has a fleet of 35 aircraft, ranging from Cessna Citations upwards. Of these five are company-owned and the rest are maintained and flown on behalf of other owners. JetAlliance has ordered eight Airbus jets to date. Its five previous aircraft included one ACJ and four A318 Elites. Of those, the ACJ and one Elite already have been delivered by JetAlliance to new owners. The company will follow a similar path with its remaining Airbus aircraft, perhaps retaining some itself but also facilitating their acquisition by new owners. The next A318 Elite is to be delivered by April 2009, with the two remaining Elites from the first order batch to follow. Of the orders announced here at EBACE, the ACJ will arrive in 2011, while the two new A318s will be delivered in 2012 and 2013. Lichtner-Hoyer says his company is looking at meeting demand for larger aircraft, in the A330 and A340 class. He told Show News that JetAlliance currently is looking at ways to “package that type of capability and make it available to our customers.” —Robert Hewson Announcing JetAlliance’s $185 million Airbus Corporate Jet orders were, l to r, Airbus execs François Chazelle, vp, executive and private aviation; Edouard Ullmo, evp, Asia-Pacific, Africa and corporate jet; Christian Robach, svp, international development, customer affairs; Bernard Robin, sales director, executive and private aviation; and JetAlliance’s Lukas Lichtner-Hoyer. CAE Plans Its Work and Works Its Plan Coming off a fourth quarter earnings report that boasts of double-digit growth, Jeff Roberts, CAE’s group president for Innovation and Civil Training & Services, has every right to feel bullish about the future, and he does—but with a note of caution. “The North America challenge is difficult,” he says. “We’re faced with a slowing economy and high fuel costs. So far, we haven’t seen any significant changes, but we’re not as robust.” Roberts says CAE’s military/civil market split of roughly 50/50 is just one aspect of its “balance” and “one thing nice” about CAE’s business. But he also paints the company’s global markets as part of the balance and says this leaves CAE better able to absorb the occasional rough patches should the economy tank. CAE consistently reinvests approximately 10% of earnings in R&D and has committed $600 million over a period of three to four years for new product development. CAE’s new 5000 series is a product of that effort, Roberts says. In creating a demand model for a new family of sims, CAE works closely with the OEM. “I wish I could make some dramatic overstatement that there was some secret formula for calculating the precise number of machines needed, but I’d be lying,” Roberts said. Instead, they take a common-sense approach and arrive at a figure for the production run on a given model, then step back and do the math. Part of the consid42 eration is pilot “churn” to estimate the split ciency in a steep turn?” between initial and recurrent training, and CAE (Booth 601) will continue to pursue its another is pilot demographics. expansion, with its Morristown, New Jersey, While Roberts says there is some palpable training center gaining nine new bays to bring pressure to reduce training costs by lowering the its total to 15 simulators by fall 2008. Its Hawker cost of sims—eliminating a motion base, say— Beechcraft 800XPi classes began in May. The he calls that a “less for less approach.” While he company’s goal, announced at the 2007 NBAA says he takes customer concerns about costs seriously, his preferred trick is “to get the same or more for less” by applying current advanced technology and finding savings in terms of training productivity. If training can move more of its customers’ learning curve further forward in the training cycle by accomplishing more knowledge gain in FTD and classroom time, training time in the fullmotion sim be-comes more productive. “What Jeff Roberts sees good times ahead, but perhaps not so good in North America. we really need are more real-world ex-periences. annual convention, is to increase its worldwide There are, on average, about 500 malfunction network to cover 90% of all business aircraft and scenarios built into a simulator. Let’s concentrate all major OEMs. It will be pursuing the same on the real world,” Roberts says. “How many aggressive plan at its Dubai and UK facilities, times do you really have to demonstrate profi- Roberts says. May 21, 2008 www.aviationweek.com/shownews http://www.aviationweek.com/shownews

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EBACE Show News - May 21, 2008

A318 Elite is on a Roll A Circle Around London P&WC Deliveries Triple Avanti Sees Sales Shift RUAG Eyes Needy Cabins Global Gets Even NICEr Embraer Beefs Up Support Honeywell ‘Virtual VFR’ Signature Europe Grows Gestair Seeks to Double Aero-Dienst Turns 50 Gama Doubles in Size All is Not Woe with Oil Ocean Sky is Aggressive

EBACE Show News - May 21, 2008

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