StandardAero (Booth C8331) is poised to double its business this year, reaching $4 billion in revenue, Marc Drobny, president of the company's Business Aviation unit, said Monday at NBAA-BACE 2019. “Our biggest news of 2019 was our acquisition by Carlyle Group [completed in April], which makes us part of the world’s largest private-equity ownership group, and that’s the next catalyst for growth,” said Drobny. “We had just achieved a doubling of the company and we’re on track to double the company yet again. We’ll probably see $4 billion in revenue this year. There are not many privately-held aerospace companies that hit a $4 billion revenue target for the year.”
Operating 40 facilities globally with around 7,000 employees, StandardAero provides MRO services on a variety of engines, airframes, and avionics. In 2018, the Scottsdale, Arizona-based company completed the acquisition of Vector Aerospace, which is based in Gosport, UK, a 100-building facility south of London that previously served as the Fleetlands Royal Navy Air Yard. The Fleetlands facility is now StandardAero's major European location and the sole location for performing heavy maintenance on the Honeywell TFE731 turbofan engine in Europe.
“We completed the first TFE731 inspection [at the Fleetlands facility] within four months of starting up in Europe,” said Drobny. “Our 20,000th overhaul of the TFE731 was also done at Fleetlands. There are 12,000 TFE731 engines still flying, so it’s a very important piece of our portfolio.”
Drobny also cited other StandardAero overhaul milestones including the 1,500th PT6 engine overhaul conducted at its Gonese, France facility; and more than 400 heavy overhauls of the Honeywell HTF7000 engine. As the only Honeywell-authorized facility for heavy overhaul on the HTF7000 and its variants, StandardAero added four rental engines at Augusta, Georgia facility in 2019, bringing its bank of HTF7000 rental engines to 13. “It’s a rare moment when not all of those rental engines are busy flying on customer platforms while we have their engines in the shop,” said Drobny.
Meanwhile, StandardAero recently signed a services agreement extending its long-standing relationship with Carolina Aviation Technical Services (C.A.T.S.), a Part 145 repair station in Statesville, North Carolina, to provide MRO support for Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A, PW100, and JT15D engines. “These agreements with multiple repair stations allow us to extend our reach to service customers,” said Drobny. “When customers go into someone else’s facility and say they need service on a PT6, we’re just a phone call away.”
In addition to engine overhaul milestones, Drobny cited a number of airframe overhaul milestones, including more than 10,000 Dassault Falcon, 7,300 Bombardier, 4,000 Hawker, and 1,000 Gulfstream airframe events since Jan. 1, 2000.
“We recently completed a 192-month inspection on a Gulfstream IV that was dismantled down to the studs and put back together again,” said Drobny. “When the airplane flew on its first test flight, there were zero squawks. We are really proud of that event.”