Embraer established AOG teams that it dispatches 75% of the time within 4 hours of the call. Frank Stevens, Embraer VP global MRO centers, explains how on the sidelines of MRO Middle East in Dubai.

Embraer just launched TEAM. Tell me about it.

Embraer is taking our mobile repair team support concept and branding them as the technical experts in aviation maintenance. We derived the idea from the fact that we did not have AOG teams in the past and the internal people who go out on the road, in teams, really love it. We wanted something our customers would recognize in the AOG support world, so we came up with the acronym TEAM (Technical Experts in Aviation Maintenance). We want our customers to recognize that when you see these people wearing shirts with the TEAM logo and they come to your airplane—they are the ones who will support you. They are the ones who will get you back into service as quickly as possible.

How many people work in TEAM?

We have four teams each made up of 5-17 people, but we only send two people out at a time, so it’s a rotating team. We send two at a time so one person can perform the maintenance and one person can sign off the inspection. Most of our teams are in North America because 70% of our fleet is based there. About 25% of our fleet is in South America and 15-20% in Europe. We don’t have a presence in Asia yet.

When TEAM technicians aren’t on the road, do they work in the hangar?

Yes, we use them as technicians in the hangar but they are not attached to billable work. So that way they can be pulled off and sent on the road at any time. We don’t want to pull scheduled maintenance people off scheduled maintenance and harm the customer’s return to service time.

Over the last two years, we’ve been building up the AOG team and proving that a dedicated team is good not only from a customer satisfaction standpoint but good for the P&L too.

Do these AOG specialists keep a suitcase at the hangar so they can leave at any time?

When we get a call, we determine where it is and who can go to that area. For instance, if we need people who speak Spanish and can go to Mexico, we find people who want to go and then dispatch the team. So it depends on where the aircraft is and what the specifics of the situation are. A lot of customers also want to choose where their team comes from, so we give them that option. For instance, we have a team in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, so if the aircraft is in South America, they’ll choose that location because they speak Spanish and that’s the most southern, and closest, location in the U.S. If it’s in California, they might choose our Mesa (Arizona) team.

What qualifications do people need to be part of TEAM?

They need to have two years of experience on the aircraft and have certification through our familiarization training, and be run and taxi qualified.