Bombardier closed a historic chapter on March 28 when the final Learjet 75 rolled out of its hangar at the company’s facilities in Wichita for a journey to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where it was to be delivered to its new owner, Northern Jet Management. Tonya Sudduth, then v-p of Learjet operations, said it was an emotional day because it marked the end of 60 years of Learjet production.

While the moment commemorated an ending, it also marked the beginning of a new chapter for Bombardier’s Wichita facilities.

Less than a month later, on April 19, Bombardier (Static Display AD_310) made a statement about its commitment to the Wichita campus, officially declaring the one-million-sq-ft site as its U.S. headquarters and home to its newly rebranded defense unit, Bombardier Defense.

“April 19th was very impactful from the perspective of Bombardier,” said Sudduth, who took on the new role of head of U.S. strategy. “It was an opportunity to recognize the significance of the site. There is no doubt that in the U.S., this is the most diverse site we have because we not only have the service center, we have our defense unit and our flight test center. We've got tons of engineers. Our customers love to come to Wichita because we have that expertise spread throughout the site.”

Further, she told AIN, the dedication of the site as the U.S. headquarters underscored to the world that the company is in Wichita to stay. "We've made that very, very clear," she said. "We've doubled down.” 

Besides reinforcing the importance of Wichita, she added, the event left no doubt that the company has a long-term plan for the U.S. “We have our Canadian headquarters, but we need to grow, expand, and leverage those relationships across the U.S.," Sudduth said.

This involves coordinating closely with all of Bombardier's U.S. locations, including its five service centers; its manufacturing location in Red Oak, Texas; a line station in California; and a parts depot in Chicago.

In the U.S., Bombardier has about 2,500 on staff, in addition to 200 contractors in Chicago. Wichita accounts for 1,100 employees. That workforce has been a significant asset for the manufacturer, and the facilities have also been valuable, as the Learjet production space has been quickly filled with other activities, including a growing defense business. A majority of the production workers have remained with the company and taken on new roles. Even so, Bombardier is looking to hire more than 200 employees in Wichita and 500 in total across the U.S.

Finding those candidates has become Sudduth's top priority, she said, adding that “competition is fierce" for workers and particularly for A&P mechanics. She noted that industry leaders are spending a lot of time on the issue.

As for the future, Sudduth considers Wichita "absolutely key from a growth standpoint. We will see growth within our defense business, coupled with our flight-test center and service center where we're doing a lot of the hiring and looking to add more and more capabilities and offerings.”

Company Goes On the Defensive

On the defense front, Bombardier president and CEO Eric Martel underscored the company’s expansive plans for its segment in Wichita, estimating during the recent Aero Montreal International Aerospace Innovation Forum that it could become a $1 billion business.

While the number was characterized as hypothetical, Bombardier is well on its way to scaling up its defense business. A contract awarded in 2021 from the U.S. Air Force for up to six Global 6000s for use in the Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) program has a potential value of nearly $465 million.

This work is beginning to fill the space in Wichita that became available with the ending of Learjet production. Led by v-p Steven Patrick, the defense unit currently occupies one of the former Learjet production hangars. But given the work already in the pipeline and possibilities on the horizon, Patrick outlined a vision to expand its footprint.

“We’re starting from this one hangar and we've got a couple of airplanes and modifications just now," Patrick said. "If you come back here 12 months from now, you will see two hangars fully occupied. And, if you come back in a couple of years, I'm hoping a lot more hangars will be fully occupied."

He added that Bombardier has made the strategic decision to be more deliberative in defense. “We see great potential,” Patrick said. Bombardier has delivered specialized aircraft for more than 20 years.

"Typically," he said, "they've been getting modified, but usually by a third party. What we decided strategically was to bring that in-house. We knew there was a pipeline of work there already. The only decision to make was where. And so this is the perfect opportunity." 

He noted that Wichita comes with a purpose-built manufacturing facility and a well-trained specialized workforce. "We have a team of people who have worked on Learjets," Patrick said. "They've worked at the service center and they've worked on flight test for years. That combination of skills, abilities, and attitude for taking on challenges means that we can do things faster, more efficiently, more flexibly than perhaps our competition can.”

When Bombardier began to roll out the future strategy for Wichita, “it was obvious,” he said. Patrick pointed to the footprint and told company executives, “I can fill this, I can fill that," adding, "It just made so much sense to do this. This is not in any way, shape, or form speculative. This is strategically necessary. I need space.”

Aircraft Services and Flight Testing

Meanwhile, Bombardier has seen services continue to grow in Wichita and has rearranged its footprint to accommodate that. Part of that growth stems from its partnership with NetJets, and that work has now spread to multiple hangars. Its other maintenance activities similarly have necessitated additional space.

Bombardier has eight hangars dedicated to maintenance in Wichita, more than double the three in use in 2015, and the services workforce has doubled. Derek Penn, general manager for the Wichita service center, estimated that Bombardier may have 50 aircraft on-site in service at any given moment.

Airplanes are coming from all over, not just from the middle of the country. Penn said this is partly because of Bombardier's long-term relationships, as well as its capabilities, which make it a one-stop shop. Not only does the site work on full aircraft; it also works on parts shipped in, he added.

Upgrades are an important segment of this growth in operations. “Everyone wants Wi-Fi on their airplane,” Penn said, noting that this has become a significant portion of the business, as have avionics updates. “We do a ton of avionics upgrades,” Penn said, adding that they often turn into bigger projects.

A third key function for Bombardier’s Wichita site is flight testing. While not quite as busy as when Bombardier still was fully flight testing the A220, née the CSeries, the flight-test center has plenty to keep it occupied.

Tom Bisges, v-p of customer engineering and testing, said the company no longer needs extra capacity at nearby McConnell Air Force Base. However, Bombardier still has three A220s on site, including two in test flights. 

The company sometimes keeps its test aircraft on-site for two to three decades, as it installs various modifications to test them out. Most recently, the Challenger 3500 had been testing there, although most of that work has wrapped up, leading to its first delivery in September. Also, the Global 8000, the newest addition to the Global lineup, is among the models on the site, complete with racks of testing equipment. However, the EcoJet, which is still a demo project, is being tested in Canada as a subscale model.

With maintenance work continuing to grow, the flight-test unit relinquished a primary hangar it used and subsequently moved into the two Learjet production hangars—the same ones that the defense unit has its eyes on for the future. “We filled them up pretty quickly,” Bisges said. “I am probably going to run out of space.” He added, however, that he is renting back some of the former space for the A220s.

For flight testing, the facility expands beyond hangars to house the aircraft. Since so much of it involves engineering and design—in fact, Bombardier’s flight test pilots are engineers—a 3D printer is on-site.

Telemetry rooms track data in real-time and can capture information from flights up to 250 miles out. Next door are a mobile unit that replicates the fixed telemetry center and a storage center for flight-test data.

The Wichita site also houses a simulator that was designed for the Global 7500 and is still used for the 8000 to enable pilots to test and familiarize themselves with the aircraft and its systems, including its fly-by-wire system.

As the various business lines continue to shift their spaces, Bombardier executives note that there is a lot of collaboration as they grapple with finding new corners for their growing work.