B/CA Show News - NBAA 2007 Day 2 - (Page 60)

N B A A 2 0 07 P&WC Continues to Refine the Art of Service Pratt & Whitney Canada no longer measures the success of its customer support by how quickly it delivers an urgently needed part, but by how quickly the airplane is returned to service. The opening of its Customer First Centre earlier this year to integrate all of its customer support resources has led to the change in the way it measures how well it is doing, says Alain Bellemare, president of P&WC. “This is a major differentiator versus our competition,” he says, one that should help it win new applications for more engines, including the 10,000 pounds thrust, which he says “is ready to launch” once it has a customer. The 24/7 center jumps into action whenever a customer calls with a problem. An “event manager” responds with shipping any parts that are needed, and pulls together all the technical resources to get those parts on the airplane as fast as possible. “It has brought together all the people who deal with events in the field, whether it is the [replacement engine] lease team, the mobile repair team, or technical support,” he says. “At the end of the day, the objective is to keep the aircraft flying with the minimum downtime. The ultimate goal is to have the aircraft available 100% of Alain Bellemare will fix it himself if he has to. the time.” In parallel with reshaping its sup- 3,000 this year. It continues to notch port center, P&WC has opened up milestones on all its programs. new warehouses in Amsterdam and Among them: Singapore to speed up delivery of AOG parts worldwide. “But the PW600 parts are only one aspect of the pic- Production is ramping up now that ture. We have to get all the elements Eclipse 500 VLJs and Cessna Musto the scene at the right time, too, tangs are being delivered. Capacity so the airplane is flying again as will be 1,500 engines per year; soon as possible.” assembly time for each engine is Meanwhile, P&WC is turning currently 10 hours as the company out engines, and plans to deliver works toward its goal of eight hours from start to finish, says evp John Saabas. “We are getting close.” The PW617 for the Embraer Phenom 100 began flight testing in July, and P&WC won a fourth application for the engine family on the Epic VLJ. aircraft to meet the very stringent Zurich V emissions rules, says Saabas. “There is only good news there,” he says. “On the fuel burn side, we have hit all the targets we agreed to, and on the noise side, the engine is 10 dB below where Stage 4 is likely to be.” “The PW308 has been chosen to power White Knight II launch aircraft for Spaceship II,” he added, “which brings very high visibility and allows us to test the engine outside our traditional envelope.” PW500 The 535 is entering service this year on the Citation Encore Plus, and the PW535E engine for the Embraer Phenon 300 is advancing towards certification. —John Morris Lots of 10K Enginemakers Searching for Customers Competition to win a launch customer for its 10,000 pounds thrust engine “is absolutely the toughest we have ever seen for a business aviation engine,” says P&WC president Alain Bellemare. Never before have five manufacturers vied to power the same airplanes, with GE Aviation and Snecma entering he market for the first time. The intense competition has driven prices down as far as they can go, says Bellemare. “Typically, you are competing with two, three others maximum. Here, you have all five major engine manufacturers in the game. This makes it very challenging. “But you have to do what is right from a commercial standpoint. There is a threshold, which we are going to be very careful about, because at the end of the day, we are in the business to exist in the long run. Not just to win in the short term and lose in the long run.” That means other differentiators that have value must be brought into play, such as technology that provides superior durability, reliability and performance, and robust global support, says Bellemare. “We are happy where we are. We are happy with our technical offering. We believe we can compete very well with pretty much anybody out there,” he says. “And on customer support we believe we have the best global footprint. We already look after 40,000 engines out there.” PW300 The PW307 on the Falcon 7X “is a step change in performance, with very low emissions” that enable the P&WC powers the Falcon 7X. Pratt & Whitney Canada Certifies 60 Products in Just 12 Years Pratt & Whitney Canada has doubled its production volume since 2003 and certified 60 new products in the past 12 years. “Everything is up by a factor of two, and sometimes a factor of three in some helicopter markets. And we are working on another 18 or so products that we hope to bring into service in the next three to four years,” says evp John Saabas. In other words, business is booming. It doesn’t stop there, he notes. P&WC has committed to invest $1.5 billion Cdn in technology and new products over the next five years (with 20% a repayable loan from the Canadian government). “But above and beyond that, we see the next big opportunity will be the 10,000-poundsthrust engine.” 60 September 26, 2007 www.aviationweek.com/shownews http://www.aviationweek.com/shownews

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of B/CA Show News - NBAA 2007 Day 2

Contents Spectrum Stresses Freedom Adam Shows A700 Cabin User Fee War of Words Execujet Boosts Services Saab's Got Your Back CAE Covers the Field London Airports Roundup Pratt & Whitney Canada Another Show! A More Digital Jeppesen CMC Rides Bizjet Wave Thales Weighs In We Fly the Eclipse 500

B/CA Show News - NBAA 2007 Day 2

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