Lure of Brazil''s Twinjet
Jan 13, 2009
By Carole Shifrin/Overhaul & Maintenance
Growing numbers of Embraer 170/190 family aircraft operated by North American carriers are spurring maintenance, repair and overhaul providers to develop new capabilities to work on the increasingly popular twinjets.
Two MROs set to take advantage of the expanding market for 170/190 heavy maintenance services are Canada's ExelTech Aerospace, which already has begun work on E-Jet aircraft, and Rome, N.Y.-based Empire Aero Center, which expects to have facilities, tooling and parts in place in the second quarter of this year.
They will compete with Embraer's own 170/190 heavy maintenance capability at Embraer Aircraft Maintenance Services, Inc. (EAMS), at Nashville International Airport in Tennessee, and Aveos Fleet Performance Inc., formerly ACTS, which offers heavy maintenance services for 170/190 operators in Winnipeg, Canada.
In addition, two U.S. regionals have invested in their own heavy maintenance facilities for E-Jets. Republic Airways Holdings, to date the largest operator of E-Jets worldwide with 124 aircraft in its fleet and six more on order, has the volume that warranted investment in its own capability, an official said. Compass Airlines, a subsidiary of Northwest Airlines, now a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines, just completed construction of a hangar at Louisville International Airport to perform scheduled maintenance on its 36 Embraer 175s. Cost of the new three-bay hangar was $9.85 million.
Potential Business
As the orderbook and active fleet have grown, it has become obvious that existing facilities could not handle all the potential E-Jet heavy maintenance business. Even Republic, which does its own heavy maintenance on its Embraer 170 and 175 aircraft at its hangar in Pittsburgh, needed to look outside for an MRO to perform "overflow" checks, a Republic official said. The major checks, carried out at 6,000 flight hours, take 1,200 man-hours to complete, he noted.
In September, Republic became the launch customer for ExelTech's new 170/190 capability with a contract for heavy maintenance, including major structural inspections and modifications, on up to 15 Embraer 170/175 aircraft operated by its Shuttle America and Republic Airlines subsidiaries. Together, the two subsidiaries operate 76 Embraer 170s and 48 Embraer 175s on behalf of five airline partners under their brands: Delta, US Airways, United Airlines, Midwest Airlines and Mokelele Airlines. Delivery of six more 175s in the first quarter will complete Republic's firm-order fleet of 130 E-Jets; it also holds 54 options.
Robin Wohnsigl, ExelTech's CEO, said Republic's 170/190 work is being carried out at a new, state-of-the-art, 140,000-sq.-ft. maintenance facility the company opened last summer at Montreal's Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport. The new hangar, also used for maintenance of Bombardier 50-90-seat CRJs and ATR 42/72s, among other aircraft, can accommodate up to eight aircraft on each of two sides, depending on the mix.
The facility is about 30% bigger than its predecessor, Wohnsigl noted, and ExelTech's workforce had a large role in designing the layout and the hangar's organization, giving them "the incentive of ownership." In Canada, mechanics working on an aircraft have to be type-trained, he added.
Wohnsigl said ExelTech works with Embraer to make sure it has what it needs, including a reasonable availability of parts. "They're interested in our mutual customer being satisfied," he added.
ExelTech is marketing its new services to 170/190 operators and is close to signing two more customers, Wohnsigl said."This is very definitely a growing fleet," he said. "We're going to see, at some point in time, a decrease in Bombardier and Embraer 50-seat aircraft and an increase in 70- and 90-seat aircraft, both Bombardier and Embraer."
And the business may come from outside North America as well, Wohnsigl suggested. Looking into the hangar from his office, he noted there were regional aircraft that had "come a long way...from Caribbean and South American customers."
Opportunity By Numbers
The number of deliveries changes constantly, but at the end of 2008, there were about 275 E-Jets in carrier fleets in North America and about 40 in Latin American fleets. There was an order backlog of about 100 E-Jets in North America and about 80 in Latin America. The aircraft seat 70 to 110, depending on model and airline configuration, and are used to replace both 50-seat jets and larger, less efficient aircraft such as McDonnell DC-9s and early Boeing 737s on existing routes and to develop services on new routes. Overall, Embraer's worldwide orderbook at the end of September stood at 865 E-Jets, with about 450 delivered.
Officials of Empire Aero Center, a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries' Bedek, also see a huge future market for E-Jet heavy maintenance. "Looking at the orders on the books right now, we feel there is great potential for getting into the 170/190 business," said Rob Tilson, Empire Aero's director of sales for North America.
Listing some of the airlines flying the aircraft--JetBlue Airways, Air Canada and a number of U.S. legacy carriers like US Airways--Tilson said Empire doesn't see E-Jet maintenance as a "regional" business. "We look at the Embraer as a mid-sized, 100-seat aircraft operation," he added.
"We just think this is an opportune time to get into the business," Tilson said, "and our cost structure is competitive." Empire is talking to "anyone operating the Embraer aircraft," he said, and expects to have a customer lined up soon. The company has done heavy maintenance on Airbus A320s for both Air Canada, which has a mix of 60 Embraer 175s and 190s, and JetBlue, which currently has 35 190s.
For its budding MRO work on Embraer 170/190 family aircraft, Empire Aero Center will be adding to its existing facilities. The company is taking over a hangar, with 110,000 sq. ft. including backshop space, that is being vacated by the U.S. military.
The plan is to have tooling and everything necessary in-house in the March-June timeframe, and to run two full lines nose-to-tail, Tilson added.
Frank Buratti, director of maintenance for JetBlue, said that EAMS does the majority of the heavy maintenance on its 190 fleet, and a handful of aircraft have gone to Aveos. With 35 Embraer 190s in the JetBlue fleet so far and another 68 on firm order, Buratti said he believes additional 170/190 MRO capacity is warranted. While Embraer's Nashville facility has been able to accommodate JetBlue's 190 MRO needs so far, Buratti said, eventually there will be a need for more capacity than Nashville can handle alone.
And having new MRO capability is a good thing, he added. "It's more leverage for the customer. It's always nice to have multiple options."
Buratti said he has talked with both Robin Wohnsigl and Rob Tilson about the two companies' new 170/190 capabilities. Besides using Empire Aero, JetBlue has used Aveos and Aeroman, an El Salvador-based subsidiary of Aveos, for heavy maintenance of its Airbus A320 fleet, which numbered 107 in early December.
Work on E-Jets at Aveos is performed at a huge facility in Winnipeg, an Aveos official said. It has three bays totaling 60,000 sq. ft. dedicated to E-Jet heavy maintenance and on-wing work on its General Electric CF34 engines. The MRO has the capability to work on two aircraft at one time, an official said, with plans to go to three.
Nashville-based EAMS has provided 170/190 heavy maintenance services since 2006, when Embraer built a new 78,000-sq.-ft. hangar at its existing maintenance base specifically to provide for the increasing number of E-Jets in North America. The facility includes a three-bay hangar sized to handle simultaneously three Embraer 195s--the largest model in the E-Jet family--as well as production shops and support offices.
The hangar also has been used to maintain Embraer's Legacy 600 executive aircraft operated in the U.S. EAMS offers the full range of services, including an airframe accessory shop, composite capability and a 28,000-sq.-ft. paint facility.
Bruce Peddle, Embraer's VP-airline market, North America, said the EAMS facility is "constantly full," acknowledging that "we cannot entirely cover the full market."
Embraer is "very open" to new MRO entrants, he indicated, adding that the company works with all maintenance providers to accommodate its customers' needs. "Our focus is to make sure customers of our E-Jets have adequate services to support their fleets," Peddle said. This includes providing all necessary ingredients, such as spare parts and tooling, to any MRO its customers want to use.
Peddle noted that recent corporate changes mean that his role covers not only marketing and sales but also customer services, spare parts support and the MRO business, including EAMS.Until recently, a separate business unit, Embraer Aviation Services, was responsible for handling all maintenance services, spare parts support and customer training for all of Embraer's commercial, executive and defense/government aircraft. A restructuring has disbanded the Aviation Services unit, moving service and support functions to the appropriate product division, i.e., commercial, executive and defense/government, in order to provide integrated customer services and support for each.
"We are now consolidating the aviation services in North America under this new general division," Peddle said. "We're very focused on the broad issue of service strategy."
This article appeared in the January 2009 issue of Overhaul & Maintenance.
Photo credit: Embraer
