With Cessna’s new Service Direct by Citation, the company’s product-support experts have devised a way to extend Cessna-brand maintenance services to customers who might not be near a Citation Service Center.

Service Direct, announced at the NBAA Convention in October, combines existing Citation services with newly developed programs, said Mark Paolucci, senior vice president of customer service, “to provide an offering of complete logistical support.” That means, he explained, a different way of delivering service or “call us anytime you need us” capability. He pointed out that a consumer with a broken refrigerator doesn’t haul it to the fix-it shop; the repair person travels to the customer’s house. “We’re moving in that direction,” he said, “which helps customers avoid using up airplane cycles, wearing out brakes and burning fuel.”

In practice, what this means is that Cessna will position teams of mechanics at locations near where customers are located. These mechanics will be available for a variety of duties, including helping an operator put a new Citation to work, supplementing an operator’s maintenance department when mechanics are on vacation and helping with jobs that the operator can’t handle.

The remotely based Service Direct teams can handle most jobs, but for major work, the airplane will have to be flown to a Citation Service Center.

Technicians assigned to the remote locations will be equipped with the tools to service the customer’s aircraft. If the technicians are based at the customer location, the tools will be located there, too. If a customer doesn’t need a full-time technician, then one technician could be shared among multiple customers and operate with a Cessna mobile service unit truck. Cessna has four mobile service units, including one collocated at its Mesa, Ariz. service center because there is a lot of Citation traffic in the Southwest U.S, according to Paolucci. Two more were due to be added by year-end and more are planned. The trucks carry a complete set of jacks, a hydraulic drive unit to run the aircraft’s hydraulic system, nitrogen, oxygen, electrical power, spare parts and computers with diagnostic programs and maintenance manuals.

Cessna has also fielded a Citation Ultra air response team to fly parts and technicians to fix customer airplanes in a crisis. “We consider that to be one in which shipping the part will not get it there in time to allow the customer to make the next flight,” said Paolucci.

The ultimate benefit of working with remotely based Cessna technicians and the mobile service units, Paolucci said, is that it preserves the Cessna service center pedigree in the customers’ logbooks. “And at resale time, operators have a Cessna sign-off.”