“It’s true we may have been a bit complacent; we were maybe arrogant,” Eric Martel, president of Bombardier customer services and specialized and amphibious aircraft, said of his company’s past attitude to business-jet product support on Monday at the 2012 Bombardier Maintenance & Operations (M&O) Conference for the Learjet, Challenger and Global in Montréal, Québec.

Now, he said, Bombardier is on the right path when it comes to customer support. The Canadian aircraft manufacturer has invested heavily in bolstering its support network around the globe, with a new facility to open in Singapore soon, and has also boosted its parts inventory to the tune of $180 million. Speaking about globalization, Martel told M&O attendees, “In 2000 there were 2,500 business jets to service, 80 percent of them in North America. Now it’s 4,000, and only 60 percent of them are in North America.”

He said that Bombardier has addressed reliability issues with the Global series not only with technical fixes but also with the company’s decision to offer more than 3,000 parts to customers free of charge, even after their warranties expired. “We were behind [in product support] but we now have the right people and the right service and experience,” he said, adding that he believes “we’re now pretty close to if not better than” some competitors in customer support.