Sikorsky Support Services won a $15.6 million modification to a previously awarded firm-fixed-priced contract to exercise options for organizational, selected intermediate, and limited depot-level maintenance for aircraft operated by the Adversary Squadrons based at Naval Air Station (NAS) Key West, Fla.; NAS, Fallon, Nev.; and Marine Corps Air Station, Yuma, Ariz. Work is expected to be completed in November. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md. is the contracting activity.
TIMCO Aviation Services hired Leonard Kazmerski as vice president of marketing and business development. He most recently was United Airlines' airport operations relationship manager.
Lufthansa Technik signed a memorandum of understanding with Austrian Technik to help it reduce Austrian's engineering costs, maintain the Vienna site as an independent center and further develop shared facilities.
FAA slid the release date for three rulemakings that the agency previously thought would be published in August -- the final rule for CVR/DFDR upgrades, the final rule for the Enhanced Airworthiness Program for Airplane Systems, and the notice of proposed rulemaking for ADS-B equipment mandates. All three rulemakings are expected to be published in September. Those three rulemakings as well as the final rule on fuel tank flammability/inerting rule were expected to be ready for DOT review in May.
AJ Walter signed several deals recently, including a five-year spares inventory management contract with Travel Service for fleet support for up to 12 Boeing 737NGs, and a five-year spares management contract with Singapore Aircraft Leasing Enterprise.
Rockwell Collins appointed Walter Hogle as vice president of government operations. Phil Jasper will succeed Hogle as vice president and general manager of Rockwell Collins Integrated Systems.
B/E Aerospace has appointed Satair as its exclusive distribution partner for oxygen products with full effect by Jan 1, 2008. The agreement includes the worldwide support of equipment from B/E Aerospace's recent Dräger Aerospace acquisition.
U.S. airlines may have to spend anywhere from $15 billion to $22 billion on equipping aircraft for the next-generation, performance-oriented air traffic control system that FAA now envisions by 2025. Add in equipment for general aviation, military planes and non-U.S. aircraft -- for this will be a global effort -- and the total will go much higher.
Pratt & Whitney Canada expanded its parts distribution network in Europe and Asia, and it plans to a open a new parts distribution center in Singapore this summer. The Singapore PDC, which will carry a large inventory of new parts, exchange accessories and LRUs for all P&WC engine models, is the second in a series of regionally located, "rapid-response" PDCs that the company is opening. The first opened in Amsterdam in November.
AirAsia announced it signed a memorandum of agreement with Sepang Aircraft Engineering (SAE) to carry out Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 airframe maintenance. Further details on the agreement were not available at presstime. Singapore Technologies Aerospace has been providing airframe, engine and component support for the AirAsia 737s for the past several years, and earlier this year signed an A320 component maintenance-by-the-hour contract with the airline. The A320s are young enough that they don't yet require extensive airframe maintenance.
China Eastern Airlines took delivery of the first of three Airbus A300-600Fs from EADS EFW's facility in Dresden, Germany. China Eastern Airlines formerly operated the aircraft as a passenger plane. The second A300-600 is being converted and the third should start in September.
Manuel López Aguilar, executive vice president of maintenance and engineering for Iberia Maintenance, talks about how the MRO plans to grow its third-party maintenance business by at least 40 percent this year, its expansion strategy and potentially getting into 757 cargo conversions. Edited for length and clarity. O&M: Iberia Maintenance's income from third-party aircraft maintenance climbed 40.7 percent last year. What accounted for most of that growth?
Durham Manufacturing introduced a series of 10 ergonomic, stringer-less folding work benches that have a capacity of up to 2,000 lbs. The benches, with four heavy-dusty gussets for stability, feature 14 gauge steel tops with channels on all four sides. Hinged legs can be adjusted in one-inch increments, from a 28-inch height to a 42-inch height above the floor. Optional shelves and drawers can be fitted to any of the tables. Drawers attach to the tops using pre-drilled holes and open and close on ball bearing slides.
Airbus painted the first A380 for Singapore Airlines in 21 days, using 100 painters in four shifts. They used 2,200 liters of chromate-free paint to cover the 3,100 meter surface. Singapore Airlines is the launch customer for the A380.
Business Jet Access appointed John Hayes as director of maintenance for the aircraft charter and management divisions. Prior to joining BJA, Hayes worked at NetJets, including being director of maintenance and manager of quality assurance at the Savannah, Ga., base.
Goodrich Aerostructures won a $9.4 million firm-fixed-price contract to provide forward nose landing gear doors, gridlock design, 300 each; aft nose landing door, gridlock design, 300 each; in support of USAF A-10 aircraft.
Singapore Technologies Aerospace's newest MRO, Panama Aerospace Engineering, inducted its first aircraft, a Copa Airlines' Boeing 737-700, on May 12. PAE will complete a 4C check and modifications on the aircraft.
Crane Aerospace & Electronics appointed Todd Newell as director of operational excellence for the Electronics Group; named Rich Weatherford as vice president of operations for the Electronics Group; announced Ramin Aflakian as vice president of the cabin solutions value stream; and appointed Samantha Ziesel as aerospace group director of customer service.
A show like Aviation Week's MRO conference is an ideal setting to gauge the buzz level of a topic like safety management systems. Right now -- in the U.S., at least -- SMS implementation is voluntary for operators and maintenance providers, and the benefits of a solid program are evident in financial statistics as well as safety and quality data. Sessions on comparable voluntary programs that target process improvement -- like Lean and Six Sigma -- typically draw huge, executive-level crowds at MRO.
Paint and composites preparation might just have gotten quicker and less dusty thanks to 3M Aerospace's new Clean Sanding Disks, which help channel the dust and pull it away from the aircraft part being worked on. This also should create a cleaner, less dusty environment for technicians, according to Paul Neary, MRO market segment manager for 3M Aerospace.
Singapore Technologies Aerospace, with its six overhaul facilities, logged more commercial airframe maintenance man-hours than any other MRO in 2006, but several competitors, including Lufthansa Technik, Air France Industries/KLM Engineering & Maintenance, and HAECO and its subsidiaries are not far behind, according to O&M's biennial survey of the airframe MRO market.
America Air Taxi Aereo of Sao Paulo has been appointed the exclusive Brazilian service center and parts distributor for Fairchild Metro and Merlin aircraft, according to M7 Aerospace, which acquired the assets of Fairchild Aircraft in December 2002 and holds the type certificates for the Merlin and the Metro.
