Mark Burns: Steady at the Helm

AM: Larry Flynn leaves big shoes to fill. How will you live up to his legacy?

Burns: It’s a big challenge. I am fortunate to have worked really closely with Larry for a long time. For 14 years we have had daily interaction. I know a great deal about what he brought to Gulfstream and I have had a chance to work in every facet of our business. I’ve worked in engineering, manufacturing, completions, and support. I think I understand the business well. I know our employees well, having been with the company for 26 years. I am just one of 3,200 people in the support organization. I have also learned a great deal from Joe Lombardo [president of Gulfstream Aerospace] and Pres Henne [senior VP for programs, engineering and test]. There will be challenges but I look forward to meeting those challenges. I feel very strongly that we can be successful in the future.

AM: What trends are you seeing in business jet maintenance and aircraft support as you take the helm?

Burns: The biggest trend we are seeing is the international growth we’ve been experiencing with sales and how that impacts our ability to support the aircraft. We are also seeing more and more managed aircraft and we’ve had to adjust some levels of support. Another interesting development we have seen is the number of individuals buying their first aircraft. We’re seeing a lot more single ownership of airplanes.

We’ve seen these things coming and have been working to deploy people and parts, authorizing additional facilities. We are also making sure we are training customers well before they are entering into service, so that it is a smooth experience. We’ve hired 550 new service center technicians in the last year.

AM: With so many new hires in your organization, how are you training them?

Burns: Our first priority is the safety of our customers. We take training our employees very seriously. We are training not only in the technical aspects but also in safety and customer service. We use a mixture of contractor and in-house training. Most safety training we do ourselves, in-house. We also have a partnership with FlightSafety Intl with more than 10,000 training days available to us a year. We use a strong program of on the job training and mentoring. Our mentoring program assigns a mentor to all new hires.

AM: We continue to hear about a lack of qualified technicians in the work force. Are you seeing that at Gulfstream?

Burns: We’ve had tremendous success hiring good people, but it is not without its challenges. We sometimes use contract houses as a way to evaluate a potential employee and then hire them into our staff. One of the more important programs we have is a military recruiting program. We are recruiting from retiring military personnel and since many of those individuals do not have an A&P certificate, we are paying for them to get their A&P within their first year of employment. We also have a cooperative agreement with Savannah Technical College. We worked together to build a curriculum and if a student successfully completes the course of study, they are guaranteed an interview with Gulfstream.

AM: What changes will you make?

Burns: I don’t see a lot of change at this point. I think the biggest change at this point is going to be finding somebody to put in the role that I held previously, because it is a very active role out speaking on behalf of Gulfstream to our customers. I don’t see a huge turn or shift. Having said that, Joe Lombardo has a saying, "There is no status quo," and our culture is about continuous improvement. I was really proud of the team at the operator’s conference this week. I had one customer say, "No matter who I interact with at Gulfstream, I always get the feeling they want to do better." That is the core of what Joe means.

AM: How do you instill that kind of philosophy into your people?

Burns: Well, I enjoy the interaction and having been here so long and I know a lot of the employees very, very well. I get an opportunity every day to interact with a large percentage of our people and looking for ways to innovate, listening to the employees and to the customers, that is really at the core of continuous improvement. It is listening to the people that know the most about the business.

I think being available and hopefully by making those innovative changes, that will instill a level of confidence in both customers and employees that a good idea doesn’t fall on deaf ears. I think we continue to do that by the expansion we’ve made to service with products like the Airborn Product Support (APS) airplane and Plane Connect.

AM: There are many facets to heading up Gulfstream product support, including Gulfstream-owned service centers, authorized service centers, parts, technical support, and custom engineering. How will you juggle these disparate departments?

Burns: All these things are working in concert to produce a result for our customers. I’ve done this a long time. We have an incredibly strong team of support people and managers in our network and we’ve all worked very closely together for quite some time. I rely on them heavily, as you would imagine. It doesn’t feel like juggling. There are good days and bad days, but the good days far outweigh any bad situations that we have. I don’t look at it as a hard thing. I am looking forward to the challenge and will continue to try to make a difference. It is very easy to work all those things in concert and we have a strong group of people that help run this business. I am just one of 3,200 plus.

AM: Business jet manufacturing has seen a remarkable period of growth over the last 5 – 7 years. How do you see that growth impacting Gulfstream product support?

Burns: Growth has been good for us. It has given us an opportunity to expand the facilities that we own and to authorize new facilities. It has allowed us to bring in more new people, technicians and engineers, throughout our business. The things impacting us are continuing to bring in qualified people in to the business and continuing to grow the service capacity that we will need. On the customer side, the challenge becomes making sure that we have done everything we can to help a customer prepare for entry into service. With our growth internationally we are going to see airplanes in places we haven’t had experience in, such as Eastern Europe and China.

We are two years into a plan to improve support in Eastern Europe and are in discussions now about how to better support customers in China. We will have a team of people on site for the Olympics and have a number of parts that we are moving into China to help support that effort. Those are the two biggest areas we are growing in and learning everyday. We want to make sure the customers in those regions have the tools they need to be successful.

AM: Are you seeing a slowdown in the service side of business at all? Are fuel prices an issue?

Burns: Our flying hours continue to go up. The service business continues to grow and be strong. If you look at Savannah, this time 18 months ago, we averaged 35 airplanes per day. Eighteen months later we are averaging 45 airplanes per day. The parts business is still very, very strong. The real telling sign is that flying hours continue to be up. In 2005 we delivered 84 aircraft into the market; in 2006 we delivered 104 aircraft into the market; and in 2007 we delivered 138 aircraft into the market. Those people require product support and services. We are looking to deliver, this year, 159 aircraft.

AM: What impresses a Gulfstream product support customer?

Burns: To Gulfstream owners, no is not an answer. I think what impresses people the most about our team is our sense of urgency. AOG is something that truly means we are going to put our best foot forward. We are going to make sure that every facet of what we do meets their demand for return to service. So if there is one thing that impresses them most, it is that sense of urgency, even in our day-to-day duties.

We also have a customer advisory board where we bring in 75 customers to discuss issues and strategies twice a year. And they get to come back in about six months and see what actions we’ve taken and the urgency we had to correct those problems. When they come back and see how those action items got addressed and here’s how we did it, that truly is how we impress them.

AM: Can you give me an example of a time when a Gulfstream product support customer was impressed?

Burns: We had an issue with a large cabin Gulfstream returning from Europe. We got a downlink from the airplane that they were having a particular problem. We were able to dispatch the Airborn product support airplane to meet them at one of our service centers. We were going to be able to turn the aircraft around rather quickly in about four hours. But in that four-hour period of time the owner would have missed getting home in time to attend his daughter’s birthday party that evening. So what we did is we took him home on the APS airplane and he made the birthday party on time. He sent me a letter letting me know that he was a Gulfstream customer for life.