U.S. defense budgets are declining, but Parker Hannifin, a leading supplier of hydraulics, fluid systems and flight controls, still sees lots of opportunity in aerospace. With major positions on platforms such as the Airbus A350, Bombardier CSeries, Comac C919 and Embraer Legacy 450/500, the company projects annual aerospace sales will rise two-thirds by mid-2016, to $3.5 billion. Roger Sherrard, president of Parker's aerospace unit, and Thomas L. Williams, executive vice president and operating officer, spoke with AW&ST Editor-in-Chief Joseph C.

JorAmco has added a new flag to its roll of customer national airlines.

Ethiopian Airlines' maintenance arm has been approved to overhaul CFM International CFM56-3 and -7B engines.

At first glance, you would think logistics at PDQ Air Spares would be fairly simple. The Hampshire, England-based distributor of spare parts does very little outbound shipping. Its airline customers use their own freight agents to manage order shipments. Nor does PDQ handle its own inbound shipments; it outsourced that function to B&H Worldwide. The third-party logistics provider negotiates rates and schedules shipments with carriers such as FedEx, DHL and UPS for PDQ.

Airlines use predictive maintenance to slash costs, convert unscheduled maintenance to scheduled events and reduce asset downtime. They have been doing it on engines for some time, and now airlines can perform predictive maintenance much more effectively because new aircraft yield more data, and the tools for exploiting it have improved dramatically. Yet ways of thinking and business processes also must change, which often is more difficult than tapping sensors.

Aerovision International has disassembled five of the 10 young Embraer ERJ-145 aircraft it acquired last August and is in the process of parting out a sixth, which marks the first retirements of the 50-seat regional jet other than that of one prototype. But the Muskegon, Mich.-based company is repairing the other four in hopes of finding airlines willing to buy or lease them, says President and Co-owner Jeff Barnes.

Asia, the Middle East and North America are emerging as the most attractive likely markets during the next three years for Boeing 777 widebody heavy maintenance visits and C checks, underscoring the potential for a capacity crunch heading the industry’s way. According to data in the Aviation Week Intelligence Network’s MRO Prospector tool, today’s active 777 fleet will need $684.9 million worth of heavy maintenance visits (HMV) and C checks in a 36-month period ending in September 2015, the most recent study period.

Performance worries over military and commercial helicopter operations in the harsh conditions of the Middle East deserts could be eased with a new distributorship deal signed today.