Aircraft maintenance providers have been sending crews out to customer locations to turn wrenches for aircraft on ground (AOG) situations for decades. However, shops have been kicking it into gear the last few years, creating dedicated response teams, specialized mobile maintenance vehicles and upping their response time and capabilities.
By utilizing mobile or rapid response teams, customers can reduce downtime, save money and benefit from convenience by not having to schedule a crew, fuel the plane, arrange for travel and add cycles to the aircraft just to move it to a facility.
AMT talked to a number of maintenance facilities, so many that we will be breaking apart this feature article into two parts. Below you will find Part 1, and, Part 2 is planned for our April/May issue. We talked to Burlington Air Center, Dallas Airmotive, Duncan Aviation and StandardAero. The next installment will include Clay Lacy, West Star and Textron Aviation.
Burlington Air Center
Even though Burlington Air Center developed its Mobile Response Team within the last couple of years, the company has been providing on-the-road service backed by its Part 145 Repair Station to customers for decades with standard tool ups that they grab from their own boxes into “go-bags.” “In order to become more efficient and keep customers happy, we decided to invest in a truck and a trailer that we keep everything we could possibly think of on to perform almost any job, and the best part is all we have to do is load our toolboxes (the trailer fits two side-by-side) onto the trailer and go. It’s a system that’s proven us well so far,” explained Robert Hintz, A&P, Mobile Response Team Leader at Burlington Air Center.
The maintenance company has one dedicated position for the Mobile Response Team, which is Mobile Response Team Leader, and the other mechanic positions on the team depend on the workload of the job they are traveling to and the scope of the work being performed.
“We designed our trailer to do any major phase/document inspection on Citation series Cessna’s and King Air’s, as well as scheduled/unscheduled maintenance of Hawker’s, Pilatus’, Gulfstream’s, Falcon’s, and Learjet’s on the road,” Hintz noted. The trailer is outfitted with everything from miscellaneous hardware to avionics repair kits, jacks, oxygen, nitrogen, ground power cart, hydraulic mule, consumables, everything Burlington thought it would ever need just in case while on the road. “We pride ourselves in being able to be as self reliant as we are,” he said.
In an AOG situation, Burlington is capable of routine servicing and maintenance…tire change, service oxygen/nitrogen, oil/hydraulic servicing and extensive troubleshooting of airframe, powerplant and avionics systems.
However, Burlington’s capabilities extend far past AOG situations. They have the capabilities to perform and have performed landing gear component changes and gear swings, hot section inspections, major avionics upgrades and much more all on the road.
“The key benefit for our shop having a dedicated Mobile Response Team is that we know when we get an AOG call we don’t have to waste time tooling up, packing or trying to remember if we grabbed all the necessary consumables,” Hintz explained. “We load a toolbox and we are on the road quickly with no wasted time and everything we need within reason to get the job done efficiently.”
Burlington’s response unit has a printer/scanner that stays on the trailer, giving them the ability to do logbook entries and other necessary paperwork on the road while at a facility that doesn’t have printing or other similar capabilities. Additionally on the trailer is a winch that is able to run off of its mobile ground power cart to assist with the loading and offloading of heavy equipment like toolboxes or engine crates.
Hintz says that one the company’s goals is to purchase additional mobile units to service multiple airports at the same time with multiple mobile teams. “With the way Aviation is trending, we are hopeful it will be sooner than later,” he pointed out.
Dallas Airmotive
Dallas Airmotive has provided mobile/field service support to customers since the early days. In 2010, the company formally introduced its organized F1RST SUPPORT team and now, with sister company, H+S Aviation, it has more than 60 technicians focused on global field support.
Dallas Airmotive and H+S Aviation offer varying levels of mobile support for 24 engine and APU product lines from Pratt & Whitney Canada, Honeywell, Rolls-Royce and GE.
“Those engines power more than 85% of business aircraft and more than 55% of the turbine-powered helicopters in the global fleet for operators in business and general aviation, government/military, commercial and rotorcraft sectors,” explained Mark Stubbs, chief commercial officer of global engine services at Dallas Airmotive. “Major supported airframers include Air Tractor, AgustaWestland, Airbus Helicopters, Bell Flight, Boeing, Bombardier, Cessna, Dassault Aviation, Embraer, Fokker, Gulfstream, Hawker Beechcraft, Learjet, MD Helicopters, Pilatus, Piper, Robinson, Sikorsky and Thrush Aircraft.
Dallas offers varying levels of OEM-authorized engine and APU unscheduled, scheduled and AOG mobile support including line maintenance, component and accessory repair and replacement, MPI and HSI, removal and reinstallation, minor level maintenance, borescope inspections, power section repair and troubleshooting and repairs for over-torque, lightning strike, sudden stoppage and much more both on and off-wing.
“In recent years, we’ve built our 36 series APU program around our F1RST SUPPORT field services and are now the only independent, OEM-authorized MRO provider capable of hot section inspections and compressor seal repairs on-site,” Stubbs mentioned.
“We are always looking to expand our F1RST SUPPORT field service team’s engine and APU capabilities and reach in response to customer need. Each year we add additional field capabilities, tooling and regional technicians to areas of focus and demand all over the world.”
A core pillar of Dallas’ service is being where the customer is when they are in need. While much of engine maintenance is carefully scheduled by aircraft operators, the true benefit of the global engine services network is being a call, e-mail or website request away from a technician being dispatched to AOG or unscheduled events. “The ability to be a dynamic organization that can provide comprehensive support to customers to get them back in the air and on-schedule is key,” he noted.
Duncan Aviation
Duncan Aviation has been sending crews to customer locations providing AOG engine and field-repair work since the early 1970s. And, in 2000, Duncan organized dedicated teams of mobile-ready turbine engine techs to form the Duncan Aviation Rapid Response Teams (RRT). The first RRT were located in Dallas, Texas, quickly followed in Chicago, Denver, Phoenix and Fort Lauderdale. There are 18 Rapid Response locations across the United States, including at all three Duncan Aviation MROs in Battle Creek, MI; Lincoln, NE; and Provo, UT. These teams include 30 engine technicians and 18 airframe technicians.
Duncan services various engine models from Honeywell, APU, Pratt & Whitney, Hamilton Sunstrand, GE, Williams and Rolls-Royce and airframes from Cessna, Hawker, Falcon, Learjet, Challenger, Global Express, Astra, Gulfstream, Legacy, Praetor, and Phenom.
Duncan Aviation takes its rapid response time very seriously by promising clients they will hear back via phone within 30 minutes to acknowledge the AOG request; an hour to follow up with labor availability and logistical planning, and 24 hours to be on-site pending any agreements and approvals.
“The RRT can be boots on the ground troubleshooting the squawk while keeping in close contact with our main facilities for tooling, GSE and potentially additional support depending on what the issue is,” explained Kasey Harwick, Duncan Aviation’s VP of Aircraft Services. “From engine and APU changes, airframe component changes to simply servicing oil or oxygen, our team’s mission is to ensure that our customers don’t miss their mission due to an AOG situation.”
Andrew Arcuri, RRT assistant manager—East, says AOG situations are never planned and often show up at the most inconvenient times. Having Duncan’s RRTs strategically located across the US means the company will respond with the right team closest to the aircraft’s location. They arrive with fully equipped vehicles that maintain AOG support inventory to provide what is needed, when and where it’s needed. “Our teams are pretty incredible,” Arcuri said. “They offer 24/7 support and are the most knowledgeable and trusted technicians in the industry.”
StandardAero
Scott Arms, VP engine programs and mobile services stated that “StandardAero’s Mobile Services is a critical part of our business. As the market transitions from time-based to on-condition maintenance, customers will expect MROs to provide a broader range of on-site services and capabilities to minimize aircraft downtime.”
StandardAero has provided mobile support to customers for more than 30 years. Fourteen years ago, the company established dedicated teams to meet growing demand and increased complexity of completing events in the field. StandardAero has continued to evolve its approach to mobile services as the market has changed. Most recently that means adapting to changes in mobile services driven by the transition from fixed time engines to on-condition engines.
“We have 16 MST dispatch sites strategically located across North America and Europe in addition to a centralized Mobile Operations,” noted Arms. “We evaluate and position our mobile service teams close to key business aviation airports to ensure fast response times. Currently, we have more than 80 employees involved with responding to our customer’s mobile service needs.”
StandardAero primarily covers TFE731 Series, HTF7000 Series, GTPC36 100/150 APU family, CFE738 and PW300 Series engines. However, it also supports CF-34, AE3007 PT6A and PW100 engines via its extended service network.
“StandardAero sees mobile services as critical part of our business moving forward,” noted Arms. “We are currently evolving our workforce and business model to ensure we are positioned to fully leverage mobile services. For example the transition from fixed-time engines to on-condition engines has driven a number of changes to our mobile service teams and business model. First, our mobile service teams are expect to handle a broader scope of events in the field including hot section repairs.” This change comes with a need for specialized training for the MST team like, run/taxi (aircraft taxi and ground movement for engine testing) and remote non destructive testing services. Second, having direct access to move MRO owned rentals engines and inventory 24x7 helps the team stay on task and on time, Arms says.
StandardAero has a new Mobile Service Dispatch app, which allows the company to better track its teams so that it can respond even faster to customer requests. “This app helps us get a team to the customer’s site and ensure they have the right training, tools and parts to start the event quickly and return the aircraft to service as fast as possible. In addition, we also have the MySA app that allows customer to stay current with work being performed and approve work remotely.”
