There are a plethora of reasons that Querétaro makes a good home for Messier’s landing gear facility and the fact that the city is becoming a major player in aviation manufacturing and maintenance is high on the list of those reasons.

On October 10, 2007, Messier Services Americas officially dedicated its new landing gear and hydraulics MRO facility in Querétaro, Mexico, replacing the plant it closed at Washington’s Dulles International Airport. Messier Services, which is part of the SAFRAN Group, is a global player in the landing gear servicing business, with other plants in Europe and Asia. While the $20-million, 10,000-square-foot Querétaro facility currently employs 180, Messier Services plans to expand. The ceremony was attended by executives from Messier Services and the SAFRAN Group, as well as by Mexican officials, journalists and employees.

"The Querétaro facility represents a new milestone in customer support for Messier Services and allows us to provide the highest quality MRO solutions while minimizing the cost of ownership," according to Claude Gobenceaux, the director general of Messier Services Americas.

The Querétaro MRO is currently overhauling landing gear and hydraulics for A320 family aircraft and Bombardier regional aircraft, including both CRJs and DHC8s. It delivered its first landing gear in June of 2007. According to Gobenceaux, the plant will be ready to overhaul A300 and A310 landing gear by this month and A320s, 330s and 340s in 2008. Messier also plans to start overhauling Boeing landing gear in its Querétaro plant, beginning with 737NGs and eventually servicing 787s, whose landing gear are manufactured by Messier Dowty. The DGAC Mexico, FAA and EASA regulatory authorities have approved the facility.

US Airways, Air Canada, JetBlue Airways, and Air Jamaica are currently customers of the Querétaro facility. According to Gilles Bouctot, Messier Services International chairman and CEO, Messier Services is negotiating contracts with several other carriers, including contracts for servicing Boeing landing gear.

Messier Services projects that the Querétaro facility will overhaul 200 individual landing gear next year. Messier intends to expand the facility to 200 employees next year and to 250 in 2009. In the long run, Gobenceaux hopes that business at the Querétaro facility will double.

Training

As Gobenceaux says, in the landing gear servicing business, quality and safety are paramount. Succeeding requires a reliable, well-trained staff, familiar with the latest technology and industry practices.

Messier Services has carefully selected and trained its Mexican staff, according to Gobenceaux. More than 1,000 people applied for the 60 engineering jobs and 120 technician jobs at the plant. The average age of the employees hired is 31, while the average employee has six years experience in the aeronautics industry.

Training has been rigorous. Seventy of the technicians have trained for several months at Messier Services landing gear plants in France, Singapore and England. Additionally, numerous employees from the European and Asian plants have spent time in Querétaro training Mexican employees.

Why Querétaro?

More than two years ago, Messier Services decided that it had to move its Sterling, Virginia landing gear MRO facility. Messier had concluded that it was not going to profit there. According to Bouctot, Washington D.C. is a "nice city but not good for the [landing gear overhaul] business." It didn’t help that Fairfax County, Virginia, where Sterling is located, is the highest income county in the United States, where average household income is more than $100,000 per year and the average new home costs more than $1 million. In that atmosphere, wages and rents were high.

Although it was closing the Sterling plant, Messier Services needed to maintain a facility in the Western Hemisphere to remain a global player in the landing gear maintenance market. The firm’s strategy was to have a facility in each region of the world, including Europe, Asia and the Americas.

Messier Services anticipated increasing business opportunities in the Americas because of the continued growth of the air travel industry there and because the airlines are increasingly outsourcing their landing gear maintenance. As a result of NAFTA, one plant could efficiently serve Mexico and North America. Accordingly, Messier Services decided to build a new, world-class facility designed to take advantage of the best practices and designs in the industry.

Bouctot recited a number of factors that led Messier Services to choose Mexico, rather than the United States (Miami) or Canada. First, Mexico is centrally located between North America, the largest and most stable air passenger market in the world, and the fast-growing South American market. Additionally, Mexico’s domestic airline business is rapidly expanding. And Mexico’s rents and wages are lower than those in North America.

Of course, investing capital in a plant that can’t easily be moved in a developing nation like Mexico entails some risk. But the SAFRAN Group has had an excellent experience with its other Mexican plants, according to Francois Courtot, SAFRAN’s senior vice president for international development. The SAFRAN Group has a large business presence in Mexico, with more than 3,500 employees working at seven industrial sites. These businesses include Labinal de Mexico, a Chihuahua manufacturer of electrical harnesses and wiring, and two plants located in Reynosa: Globe Motor, which makes electrical motors and actuators; and CINCH, which makes electrical connectors.

Another SAFRAN subsidiary, Snecma American Engine Services (SAMES), is in the process of opening a workshop to maintain and overhaul CFM 56-5 and CFM 56-7 engines in the same Querétaro industrial park as the Messier Services landing gear facility. SAMES is scheduled to complete overhauling its first engine there in the first half of 2008.

SAFRAN is so high on Mexico, says Courtot, that it is talking with Mexican authorities about opening more high-tech facilities there. In fact, SAFRAN is on a committee set up by French President Sarkozy and Mexican President Calderon to encourage more French-financed high-tech projects in Mexico.

Gobenceaux has cited a host of reasons for selecting the new industrial park adjacent to Querétaro’s international airport as the site for its landing gear MRO.

First, Querétaro, a city of 1.1 million people, is centrally located in Mexico, only two and a half hours drive from Mexico City and on the major highway to the U.S.

Second, the Mexican government has succeeded in promoting Querétaro as an aviation manufacturing and maintenance hub. Other aerospace businesses that have opened in Querétaro include Bombardier, General Electric and ITR. Bombardier’s plant manufactures wire harnesses, fuselages and flight controls. The GE plant and the ITR workshop maintain and overhaul engines.

Third, Querétaro has schools to educate workers for jobs in the growing aerospace industry. The University Tecnologico de Monterrey has a program graduating aeronautical engineers. Additionally, the Collegio Nacional de La Educacion Profesional (CONALEP) has recently started a school for aeronautic maintenance technicians.

Fourth, Querétaro is generally a good place to do business, with a rapidly growing economy that features several large, modern, industrial parks. According to Transparenca Mexicana, Querétaro has a relatively conservative government and one of the lowest incidences of corruption in Mexico.

Fifth, it is easy to attract employees to Querétaro, which has a sunny, high-altitude climate, an educated populace, a low crime rate, and a picturesque central district that has played a prominent role in Mexican history.

Additionally, Querétaro provided Messier Services with an attractive incentive package to locate there.

Sales

The Messier Services Americas marketing department, which continues to be headed by Ian Longstreth, the vice president of sales and marketing, has stayed in the U.S., in Houston, rather than moving to Querétaro. It can be reached 24 hours a day. Longstreth likes to invite customers to see the Querétaro plant, which he says "sells itself." Messier Services is willing to craft a custom contract to satisfy the needs of each customer. For instance, Messier has contracts that share the risk with customers, pricing by number of landings instead of using the usual time and materials contracts.

Of course, Messier Services can provide spare landing gear to customers. Globally, the firm has 22 A-320 landing gear and 10 CRJ landing gear that it shuttles, as needed, between its plants in Europe, Asia and Mexico.