A little more than a year after Textron Aviation launched its 1Call team to provide a single point of contact for customers during unscheduled maintenance, the company has expanded its communications capabilities for new and out-of-production aircraft, including a new app that enables operators of older aircraft to provide an immediate notification of any potential issue.

The 1Call team was unveiled in January 2016 to provide a single-point of contact. Customers can either call the team through a dedicated phone line. But also the center receives real-time CAS messages for aircraft equipped with the LinxUs system and now, pilots can use the apps to directly connect.

This direct connection enables the company to quickly position potentially necessary resources, sometimes before the aircraft even lands, said Textron Aviation vice president of product support Michael Vercio. In addition, 1Call has tightened the coordination among the service center network.

“This new process allowed us to focus a channel to one spot, allows us on the OEM side to do the homework, so the customer doesn’t have to do that, and allows us to track where the support needs to go,” he said.

Every inquiry is tracked, with status updates and urgency notifications, to ensure each is handled on a timely basis. “For us it is all about speed, how quickly can well learn that a customer has a problem. How quickly can we put a solution in place for them,” Vercio said.

He called the 1Call Center a “command center” for putting together a plan for the customer. The center has teams focused on indivdual operators and those dedicated for fleet operators, such as NetJets.

Since its introduction, Vercio said, the centers client base has grown rapidly—“much larger than anything I projected” and is attracting new customers to Textron Aviation services. The use of the center also has given Textron Aviation better visibility to where its resources are most needed and has helped to better distribute mobile support and other teams.

The company is eyeing means of developing new technologies and applications of existing technologies to older aircraft. Last spring, the company released a LinxUs app for newer aircraft to enable immediate contact with the center, and a few weeks ago it released LinxUs Legacy to cover cover older Citations, Hawkers and Premier Is. For aircraft with Wi-Fi, the operator can immediately notify the 1Call team via a CAS message. Or for those without on-board Wi-Fi, the operator can send CAS message informaton or other data once on the ground. Textron Aviation anticipates expanding the app applications to its other fleets over time.