It’s hard to believe that in the nearly 40 years since the first Cessna Citation took to the skies, the brand has grown from the punch line of "near jet" jokes to a global fleet of over 5,100 aircraft. Today, the Citation family ranges from the Mustang very light jet up to the Citation X — the fastest production airplane you can fly without collecting a government paycheck — so there’s a Citation for practically every type of customer.

And, while Cessna has clearly done its homework when it comes to product development, it’s refreshing to see that they’ve paid equal attention to building a support network that ensures its customers receive the type of aftersales support that best suits their individual situation.

Case-in-point is the Orlando Citation Service Center, located at Orlando Intl Airport (MCO) in Florida. The facility originally opened in 1983 in Palm Beach, but moved to its new home in 2004. With a total of more than 200,000 square feet of administrative, support and maintenance space, this is the largest Citation Service Center outside of Wichita.

While the size of the facility is impressive, it’s really just a product of ensuring that each Citation customer gets the best service experience possible. "We don’t have a ‘typical customer.’ We have a lot of different customers and they all have different needs," explains Walter Berchtold, general manager at MCO. "Some of them are companies. Some are private owners. They are all driven pretty much by quality and service."

Berchtold says that right now the Orlando Service Center’s business is pretty much split between scheduled maintenance and unscheduled or "drop-in" maintenance customers and that the large facility gives them the flexibility to meet the needs of both groups.

Taking Care of Business

To make sure they can accommodate the needs of both the scheduled and drop-in customers, Berchtold says that the Orlando Service Center has two separate crew groups working on the floor at all times. "If a customer flies in with an issue now, we are not taking manpower from the people who work on the scheduled inspections," he says. "When you come in for a three-day inspection, you know you will be leaving on schedule because we have allocated the manpower to guarantee it will get done on time."

"Of course, if you fly in and the ‘drop-in’ crew is already busy, you’ll probably have to wait, but we do our best to get customers back in the air as quickly as possible," Berchtold adds.

Orlando’s drop-in crew can also quickly become a "house call" crew if the need arises. "Sometimes an airplane cannot fly here to us," he says. "For example, right now we have a crew up in Panama City. An aircraft ran off the runway yesterday and we have a team there today who will repair the aircraft to a state where it can be flown here for final repairs."

Berchtold also says that the Orlando Citation Service Center would soon be getting a dedicated mobile service unit (MSU), which is basically a Citation Service Center on wheels. "It will be fully-equipped to do maintenance on the road," he says. "It will allow us to bring the service to wherever the customer is." And it’s not just geared to incident service and repairs.

"A lot of the smaller Citations are owned by individuals and flown single-pilot," Berchtold explains. "They have other business to run and coming here for service takes time. So now they won’t have to do that. We will be able to go to them."

Total Citation Service Solution

While inspections and maintenance are the center’s mainstays, Berchtold says they do pretty much anything you can think of when it comes to supporting the Citation fleet. "We also have an avionics shop and do interiors," he says. "We don’t do everything in-house. For example, we don’t have an in-house interior shop here, but we team up with a couple of approved repair stations to do the work."

"It’s the same with our NDT (nondestructive testing). We have capabilities to do Level 2 here, but anything higher, we use one of two authorized subcontractors," Berchtold continues. "There are some other specialized services we may get outside help with. We try to do what’s most efficient, effective and seamless for our customer."

Another new service offering that involves teaming with an outside provider is the EngiNEWity Citation engine program. Cessna has partnered with Dallas Airmotive to create a program that provides favorable pricing for JT15 engine overhauls. "If you look at all of our service centers, we bring a lot of engines to the table," he points out. "We can pass those benefits on to our customers."

Berchtold says that the Orlando Center is also growing its avionics business. "We do a lot of avionics work on export aircraft. A lot of these countries have different requirements than we do, so we install those systems to meet the receiving country’s requirements. That’s a high-demand business right now."

"We are also producing a new glass cockpit retrofit for older Citations called AdViz. We use the Innovative Solutions & Support glass panels to replace all the old electromechanical instruments — the ADI, HSI and engine instruments — with three-tube glass panels," Berchtold adds. "We haven’t done one yet, but we have a mockup here. Cessna will own the STC and the program is in a pretty advanced stage right now."

While it may not seem so on the surface, the AdViz program is another example of Cessna providing its customers with the services they need to get the most out of their airplanes. "The support for the older electromechanical instruments is getting difficult and expensive," he notes.

All Citations, All the Time

With over 5,100 jets in the fleet and all the various services they offer, it’s easy to understand why the Orlando CSC is a 24/7 operation. In fact, Berchtold says, there aren’t even any light switches in the hangar bays: "If you want to turn off the lights, you have to trip the breakers."

But no matter what time of day, the CSC won’t accept anything that’s not wearing a Cessna Citation badge. "We are strictly limited to Citations. We don’t even work on any other Cessna products," he says. "We only have the Citations on our repair station license."

That unmatched level of experience and expertise is critical to ensuring customers receive the quality, reliable, timely service they demand. "We also do a lot of training. Here in Orlando alone we did over 10,000 man-hours of training in 2007," Berchtold explains. "Whether you work at the front desk or are a technician, you get an average of 50 hours of training here."

Cessna has teamed with FlightSafety to provide the majority of their technical training and it all takes place, at least as far as the Orlando Service Center is concerned, right there at the facility. "It’s just a lot more cost-effective to bring the trainers here to us," he says. "We have a training room that can hold 15 or so people at a time. It’s not ongoing, but it’s a lot of training time."

With all the training complemented by the experience gained from seeing thousands of Citations in their shop, the facility has developed a wealth of knowledge that not only benefits its customers, but also everyone who buys a new-generation Citation. "Maybe two years ago we had the CJ4 project engineers here to see early on in their design phase what they could improve on from previous models," Berchtold says. "They see the issues we are running into as the airplanes age and use that information."

Of course, as each proceeding generation of Citations gets better and more reliable, you would expect the amount of maintenance to go down. And that’s just what Berchtold and his technicians are seeing. "The maintenance programs are becoming less and less maintenance intensive," he says. "There are extended maintenance intervals now and so we now have more manpower available to take care of the drop-in maintenance side of the business."

The Right Stuff

It takes a lot more than a state-of-the-art facility and copious amounts of training to guarantee that the Orlando CSC can deliver the high level of service its customers demand — when you get right down to it, it’s all about the technicians who do the work. Currently, 160 of the center’s 200 total employees are aircraft technicians.

"We look for attitude and aptitude," Berchtold explains. "If they have previous Citation or other business jet experience it’s a plus, but it’s not necessary. We work closely with the technical schools and hire a lot of technicians right out of school. We can train the technical skills they need."

Since it opened in June 2004, the Orlando Center has been fortunate to attract the technicians it needs through its association with the schools, contract-staffing companies and from other MROs. "Word of mouth has helped," Berchtold adds. "We treat our employees right and the word gets out. One person comes in and a couple months later we get someone else from that same company."

"With the insecurity of the airlines now, we picked up a few technicians from a major airline here in Orlando," he continues. "We haven’t seen the ups and downs like the airline world. This has been a stable environment and there’s a big backlog of new Citation orders."

Challenges

While the continued growth across its customer base and the strength of the export market paint a rosy picture for the future growth of the Orlando Service Center, Berchtold says his group does face some challenges. "The biggest challenge will be the workforce — not just the technicians, but across the board," he says. "We have had very low turnover, but that will change. We have people with many, many years of experience and they are nearing retirement."

"There aren’t too may unemployed A&P technicians out there today — there may not be any and that’s becoming a problem," Berchtold says. "There aren’t many coming out of the military anymore. That’s why we do so much training. We like to form their work habits. It works out well on both sides."

That ongoing effort to attract and keep the right technicians is critical to the Orlando CSC being able to meet increasing customer expectations. "We’re really customer focused here and that’s never going to go away," he adds. "We’re always going to try and improve ourselves to deliver better service at a better value."

Better service at a better value — it seems like the Orlando Citation Service Center is sticking closely to the same formula that has made the Cessna Citation the largest fleet of business jets in the world.