The U.S. FAA still foresees a recovery of demand for aviation products and services, just not as quick as it predicted last year.

At the agency’s annual forecast in Washington, FAA prognosticators said they expect airline passenger traffic to return to the level they were at before September 11, 2001 in the 2005-2006 timeframe. Last year, they had predicted that return would come by Fiscal 2004.

The agency’s forecast, which extends to 2014, sees regional and commuter operations to continue to grow faster than those at major airlines, and stable activity in general aviation, which is expected to be sustained largely by business/corporate flight activity.

According to the forecast, passenger enplanements at air carriers will total 646.9 million this year, 679.8 million in 2004, 709.1 million in 2005, and 737.6 million in 2006. Last year’s forecast predicted enplanements would reach 1 billion by 2013, but this year’s pushes sees enplanements totaling only 996.2 million by 2014. The reduced pace of U.S. commercial and general aviation’s recovery, the agency said, is due largely to the lingering effects of the 2001 economic slowdown and events surrounding Sept. 11, 2001.

A bright spot continues to be the regional/commuter industry segment airlines that primarily operate aircraft with 70 seats or fewer. The FAA sees growth in this segment growing at 5.6 percent annually, compared to the 3.5-percent annual growth projected for the larger airlines. The regional/commuter growth is expected to be fueled by additional passengers obtained through code-sharing arrangements with larger carriers, the FAA said, "as well as the creation of more nontraditional point-to-point routings that use new regional jets."

The agency sees low to moderate growth for general aviation. For the latest forecast’s 12-year time frame, the FAA foresees a 0.7 percent increase in the active GA fleet, with hours flown increasing by 1.5 percent annually, with most of the growth occurring in business and corporate flying.

 

‘Free’ Training by Aviall

For employers that complain about the high cost of training, there is no excuse not to send technicians and other maintenance personnel to the symposiums put on by Aviall four to five times a year.

Aviall’s Regional Parts & Maintenance Symposiums are the brainchild of Patrick Murphy, a semi-retired Aviall marketing expert and long-time promoter of the benefits of sharing information. Aviall’s symposiums do just that: open the lines of communication between vendors of aircraft products and the people in the field who buy, install, and use the products.

Last October’s Atlantic City symposium, which I attended, was a great combination of information and networking opportunities. Vendors ranged from engine manufacturers Teledyne Continental, Lycoming, Pratt & Whitney Canada, and Rolls-Royce, to vendors such as Lord, Michelin, Kelly Aerospace, Goodyear, Champion, Aircraft Parts, Precision Airmotive, Unison, Cleveland, 3M, and many more.

The best part is that vendors have only half an hour to give their presentations, so the information flows quickly and there isn’t enough time to get bored with long-winded speeches. Engine manufacturers are allotted two-hour sessions, and attendees can have a choice of which engines they’d like to learn more about. The content of the presentations is supposed to focus on maintenance, not on marketing of products, and most companies did adhere to this policy.

Technicians know that it is impossible to get too much training, and the Aviall symposiums are a great way to learn a lot at a very reasonable cost. The symposiums also qualify for the eight hours of training required for Inspection Authorization renewal. The symposium itself is free, but Aviall does charge a reasonable $25, which includes a reception and banquet on the first night and lunch on the second day.

Aviall is planning more symposiums this year.

For more information, visit www.aviall.com, click on "About Aviall" then on "Maintenance Training." Or phone Lana Marker at 972-586-1580.

–By Matt Thurber

 

GAO Faults FAA On A&P Training

A watchdog agency has told Congress again what everyone in aviation maintenance has known for years: the training curriculum for A&P mechanics has not changed significantly in more than 50 years and it doesn't prepare fledgling technicians to work on the equipment they will encounter in the real world.

The report by the U.S. General Accounting Office, an arm of Congress, found that "basic courses that train students to maintain and repair the body and engines of modern commercial aircraft are limited." It recommends that the FAA "courses that do not reflect widely used aircraft technology and materials," such as dope and fabric, "should be de-emphasized or replaced with courses that address current conditions." The report was prepared at the request of Representative James L. Oberstar of Minnesota, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

FAA officials told the GAO they have no plans to reissue old proposals for changes to A&P training and certification requirements.

While those findings weren't news, the report did contain some interesting tidbits. GAO investigators found that, from 1996 to 2001, nearly six out of 10 A&Ps were trained in the military or on the job. Only about four in 10 attended FAA-approved schools. They also noted that most of the officials of major airlines they interviewed said they anticipate a sufficient supply of A&P mechanics through 2010. Eleven of 15 participants on an industry/government panel the GAO convened felt, however, that employers may have difficulty hiring A&Ps after 2010.

 

Timco Bails Out AMS Phoenix

Only Hollywood could have dreamt up a more dramatic scenario. With no warning, an aircraft maintenance company closes its doors. Some 300 workers are jobless. Four aircraft are stranded in the hangars. A nightmare for customers and employees alike.

This happened September 18, 2002, when Aviation Management Systems (AMS) declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy and ceased operations at Phoenix Goodyear Airport in Arizona. Among the many customers affected were Federal Express, Delta Air Lines, and America West Airlines.

The airport is owned by the city of Phoenix. It has an 8,500-foot runway and can handle aircraft up to 410,000 pounds gross takeoff weight. The desert location makes it a popular aircraft storage site.

Operators of the four hangared aircraft in various stages of maintenance began scrambling to get them out of limbo. Many customers AMS were also customers of the Triad International Maintenance Corporation (Timco) Aviation Services heavy maintenance sites east of the Mississippi. One was inspired to call on Timco for help getting its aircraft, which had been in mid-C-check, out of the black hole of Goodyear. Timco ended up coming to the rescue of the stranded customers.

"We immediately mobilized teams from throughout our organization," said Jack Arehart, vice president of business development for Timco. "We sought permission from the bankruptcy court to go in and finish the work left by AMS." Two aircraft were in the middle of C-checks; two were wide-bodies undergoing resurrection checks after stints in storage.

Timco also talked to airport and city authorities, Arehart said. The FAA let Timco perform the maintenance under its Greensboro, North Carolina, repair station certificate. Within three days of AMS closing, Timco–with a group of former AMS technicians–began supporting the abandoned customers at Goodyear.

Timco had shown some interest in the Goodyear operation in the past. While nothing came of it at that time, Timco’s rescue work revived interest in the location. When the bankruptcy court put the AMS assets up for sale, Timco bid and won, acquiring the tools and equipment that AMS had at Phoenix Goodyear.

With the assets secure, Timco now needed to procure the site itself. This consisted of two hangars totaling 370,000 square feet and large enough for wide-body aircraft. These hangars included plenty of back shop space, plus 800,000 square feet of ramp space and 50 acres of aircraft storage. Negotiations for this real estate proved successful, and Timco Goodyear was born.

By January 2003, Timco had hired 40 of the former AMS employees. This was to continue performing FAA-required maintenance on the 108 aircraft that were in storage at the airport. At the same time, Timco applied for a repair station certificate for this location. Brian Sauer, formerly director of heavy maintenance for Northwest Airlines, was hired to lead this new operation as the general manager of Timco Goodyear. Certification came in record time at the end of March 2003. The FAA granted Timco Aviation Services a Class IV repair station certificate for the Phoenix Goodyear Airport location.

As for the workforce needed to perform the hands-on maintenance, Timco Goodyear has contacted all former AMS technicians with job offers. In fact, many had already been hired to perform the ongoing storage maintenance requirements.

With the Timco Goodyear certification, what began as a nightmare has become a happy ending for all involved. Long-time customers will continue to use the Phoenix Goodyear Airport location for their aircraft maintenance. New customers will be attracted not only for the convenient location but also for the wide-ranging capabilities Timco Goodyear has to offer. On the hangar floor, technicians will have plenty of work in maintaining and repairing the aircraft that visit this site. And Timco has its first location west of the Mississippi.

By Bill Whitaker

 

A Good Year for Safety

The year 2002 was a good one for aviation safety, according to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, which is reporting there were no fatal accidents involving major or commuter airlines.

The NTSB recorded 34 accidents for scheduled airlines in 2002, all of which were non-fatal. Additionally, it said, there were no fatalities to persons on the ground during the year. By comparison, there were 531 fatalities involving U.S. airlines in 2001. Half of those fatalities resulted from the September 11 hijackings.

The accident rate on U.S. scheduled airlines declined last year. The 34 accidents involving scheduled airlines put the preliminary accident rate at 0.337 per 100,000 departures (or 3.37 per million). That marked an 11 percent drop from the 2001 rate of 0.379 accidents per 100,000 departures.

While departures decreased for U.S. scheduled airlines in 2002, the NTSB said, nonscheduled Part 121 and scheduled Part 135 operations (those with fewer than 10 seats) increased. The accident rate for nonscheduled Part 121 operations increased from 1.248 accidents per 100,000 departures in 2001 to 2.333 in 2002. The accident rate for scheduled Part 135 operators increased from 1.251 per 100,000 departures in 2001 to 1.575 in 2002.

Air taxis reported 58 accidents in 2002, down from 72 in 2001. The accident rate decreased from 2.27 per 100,000 flight hours in 2001 to 1.90 in 2002, and total fatalities decreased from 60 to 33.

The number of general aviation accidents decreased slightly, from 1,726 in 2001 to 1,714 in 2002. Fatal accidents increased in 2002 to 343 compared with 325 in 2001. Despite reporting fewer accidents in 2002, the accident rate for general aviation aircraft increased slightly from 6.28 per 100,000 flight hours in 2001 to 6.56 in 2002.

Additional statistics are available at http://www.ntsb.gov/Aviation/stats.htm.

 

Avquotes: Unearthing Leads

If you’re wasting time looking for leads in all the wrong places, AvQuotes may be what you need.

In the late 1990s, while overseeing sales and marketing for Stevens Aviation, Sheldon Early found his sales team was spending too much time chasing leads. "They’d often drive 600 miles a week trying to get with aircraft owners to quote on their work," he said. "When they arrived, more times than not, the guy was out flying. We were missing a lot of opportunities because we just couldn’t connect with the right people at the right time."

Early formed an idea then left Stevens to begin AvQuotes. "Using the power of the Internet, what I wanted to create was a clearinghouse where an aircraft owner could go and post all the requirements for a particular type of project, then receive comparative quotes from many qualified service providers," he said. "It was initially created to make it easier for aircraft owners to get apples-to-apples quotes, but now the service providers are finding it to be a very beneficial tool."

The majority of AvQuote’s member companies are providers of the "big ticket" services–paint, interiors and heavy maintenance–that customers want competitive bids on (as opposed to everyday maintenance). Early checks out each applicant for membership. "We need to ensure our aircraft owners are getting quotes from qualified providers," he said. "So we make sure the shop has all the required FAA licenses" and is solidly positioned financially to handle the work."

Early said AvQuotes does as much to protect the interests of the companies. Before posting a project for quote, his team calls the aircraft owner to confirm the job’s details, the contact information, and the aircraft’s location. Knowing up front the job is real is one of the biggest benefits of membership. After the details are confirmed, AvQuotes e-mails interested providers.

"If they’re interested, they can purchase the lead for just $55 by clicking the ‘Buy’ button on the message." Early said. Then the contact information is e-mailed back to them and AvQuotes is out of the picture–until the company wins the project, at which point it pays AvQuotes a flat $750 fee.

Early said that since AvQuote’s inception in 2000, it has averaged 11 projects a month, 11 opportunities that many shops would have never known about without AvQuotes. "Many companies sign up just to get the leads," he explained. "Midcoast Aviation buys every lead whether it’s for a 172 or a Gulfstream. Where else are you going to get an aircraft’s N-number, owner’s name, and phone number for $55? They can hardly afford not to do it."

–By Dale Smith

AvQuotes
Greer, South Carolina
Phone: 864-268-7784
Fax: 864-244-3296
www.avquotes.com