Frasca International is celebrating 2008 as its 50th year in business. Focused at first on fixed-wing training needs, the family-owned Urbana, Ill. company has expanded to become a major player in the market for helicopter simulators and flight training devices. At Heli-Expo, it is exhibiting a flight training device for Era Helicopters’ new training center in Lake Charles, La. This seemed a good time to discuss with Frasca founder and President Rudy Frasca his half-century in the training market and where he sees that market going.
You founded Frasca Aviation in 1958 after working as a flight simulator instructor (on early Link simulators) and maintenance engineer in the U.S. Navy. Could you have imagined 50 years ago that the helicopter training market would become what it is today?
At the time, I was just thinking about fixed-wing. Helicopters just came up. I can’t believe it. Helicopters are right now about 50 percent of our business. We’re in about 80 countries now, both fixed-wing and helicopter simulators and flight training devices.
What’s your assessment of the helicopter training market these days?
It is huge. We’re doing a tremendous amount of business in helicopters right now. We hit R&D very, very heavy in all our trainers. Lately, we’re doing a lot of work in our helicopter business.
There is so much helicopter training going on nowadays. A lot of helicopters are being built and you’ve got to train pilots for them. Some colleges are doing training, and various schools are coming up. Military services, police organizations in various countries are interested. Firefighting, too. We’re starting to do some of those [simulators].
What are the next steps in simulation and training as far as Frasca is concerned?
There is potential for a lot more development in the civil market, and also in the military market. A lot of helicopter pilots are retired and dying off, and someone has to take their place.
I think you’ll find out that this helicopter training market will grow quite large. A helicopter simulator just makes so much sense. You can teach so much in that. My gosh, in about 1 hr in a helicopter, you can teach hover. You can teach it in about 1 hr in the simulator, too, but then you can hop in the helicopter and basically fly it in 10 minutes. You can do 75 percent of your training in the simulator. Schools can cut their aircraft time in half using simulators.
We own the company ourselves, the Frasca family. If someone bought us, they’d be more concerned about profit per month. We have about 160 employees. Half of those are engineers, and half of those are in constant R&D. So we have big names coming to us for simulators, and we have the answers for them.
[Three generations of Frascas are involved in the business. Rudy's son, John, is vice president. Sons Tom, Bob, and David and daughters, Mary, Peggy, and Liz are involved in marketing, management, production, finance, and other areas.]
What’s the message you’re bringing to Heli-Expo?
Just show people basically what we’re capable of doing with the things.
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