When Rockwell Collins (Booth 3099) met with reporters before last year’s NBAA Convention, the avionics manufacturer couldn’t say much about its still-pending acquisition of airborne communications provider Arinc. That transaction–at $1.4 billion Rockwell Collins’ largest ever purchase–closed in late December. Now the company has plenty to say about its plans to grow with Arinc in the business aviation market.
In the 10 months since acquiring Arinc from The Carlyle Group, Rockwell Collins has folded the Annapolis, Md.-based business into an “information management services” organization with its earlier-acquired Ascend Flight Information Solutions (the former Air Routing International) and Computing Technologies for Aviation (CTA) businesses. The combination, branded as Arinc Direct, presents to the marketplace a robust suite of international-trip and flight-planning software and communications connectivity on the ground and in the aircraft.
Rockwell Collins immediately “aligned” the respective sales teams and was in the process of merging the Ascend and Arinc Direct websites, integrating mobile applications and consolidating customer billing. “We’re off selling the full bundle in the marketplace,” said Jeff Standerski, senior vice president, information management services.
The Arinc Direct business aviation segment has 3,600 individual subscribers, or aircraft “tails,” but Rockwell Collins measured progress in the number of subscribers to its newly bundled products. “When we started out here, our objective was to look at where are the Ascend customers that might have different connectivity than Arinc, where are the Arinc customers that might use different international trip planning—and synch those customers up so that we can provide a combined value proposition,” Standerski said. “We’ve been able to do that on 60-plus tails already within a nine-month period.”
Founded by airlines in 1929 as Aeronautical Radio, Inc., Arinc is well known as a provider of air-ground radio communications to the airline industry, and the commercial airline segment represents 40 percent of its business. Corporate aviation represents 20 percent, but stands out as the fastest growing segment in Rockwell Collins’ five-year strategic plan. Arinc Direct’s bundled offerings should drive that growth. “We are significantly increasing the investment in this segment of the business…to go focus on those areas where we can pull together” products, Standerski said.
There are also promising “synergies” between Arinc Direct and Rockwell Collins’ core strength in avionics systems, namely its latest Pro Line Fusion flight deck and Venue cabin management system. The state-of-the-art Pro Line Fusion system has already been fielded on 200 business jets, while Venue has been installed in 450 passenger cabins. One connection Rockwell Collins is demonstrating at NBAA is downloading a flight plan from an iPad tablet computer directly to Pro Line Fusion. “As we look at those three unique brands and capabilities, as well as pull those together, we believe that’s the unique value proposition that Rockwell Collins has in the marketplace,” declared Standerski.
Appropriately, the new Arinc Direct makes its NBAA debut with new product offerings. Among them: the company is unveiling a new “tankering” feature, accessed through the Arinc Direct on-line customer portal, that helps operators determine the optimal amount of fuel to carry onboard for multi-leg journeys. The Arinc Direct iPad app has been improved with a new weight-and-balance/performance feature that provides pilots with a way to make accurate computations on their handheld devices with or without an Internet connection.
