Bombardier, which brought four major maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) facilities online and broke ground on another in 2022, is already starting to see a return on those efforts. The company opened facilities in Miami and Melbourne, Australia, and expanded operations in London and Singapore last year, and more are coming.
Also in 2022, the manufacturer broke ground on a 100,000-sq-ft service center in Abu Dhabi that is slated to come online in 2025. “It's a massive investment we've made into our future,” said Paul Sislian, executive v-p of Bombardier aftermarket services and strategy.
Bombardier (Booth K40, Stand AD_09) has invested hundreds of millions in its strategy to “bring our jets home.” The Canadian manufacturer of the super-midsize Challenger and ultra-long-range Global families has increased its MRO facilities footprint worldwide by one million sq ft in the past two years. It’s also been on a hiring spree, adding 300 technicians, with plans for 300 more.
This growth comes from a strategy laid out about six years ago. “In 2017, we set the vision as a company of this is who we want to become, and then we set the journey of the whole team driving toward there,” Sislian said. “It was a pinnacle strategy to Bombardier because it sent a clear message to the industry and mostly to our customers that we are here and we want to make sure that we take care of our customers and we add value.”
He noted that there are 5,000 Bombardier business jets in service. “We have to make sure that we properly serve our customers," Sislian said. "It's a life cycle, the relationship we have with them.” To back that sentiment up, he added that Bombardier needs to have the right infrastructure.
This is key because the company's aircraft have become larger with the addition of the Global 7500, which sports a 112-foot-long fuselage, 104-foot wingspan, and 27-foot height. With the expansion at Biggin Hill, Bombardier now has one of its largest service centers based in the London area and the ability to fit 14 Global 7500s at a time. Sislian noted that not many MROs can do that. However, Miami Opa-locka has that same capability and the Singapore center was quadrupled in size.
While not ready to detail the company’s plans, Sislian made it clear that Bombardier is continuing to explore growth opportunities. “As far as I'm concerned, it's an evolution," he said. "There's no destination—you've just got to keep going."
Along with the company's plans are big ambitions for returns—doubling services revenues from $1 billion in 2020 to $2 billion in 2025. Bombardier is already seeing the fruits of its efforts, bringing in $424 million from its services in the first quarter alone—a 17 percent year-over-year increase.
“We are not surprised but happy that the reaction that we're getting from the market is commensurate with what we are trying to achieve,” Sislian said. The company has clear goals for market share of Bombardier aircraft service along the way, wanting to jump from 36 to 50 percent.
Beyond market share and ensuring capacity for its flagship Globals, Bombardier sees other advantages to servicing its own aircraft. One is the new products it develops as a result and another is the ability to transition from reactive to predictive maintenance to stay ahead of the aircraft’s servicing needs.
“We can actually get feeds from an airplane that's flying of what's going on with a certain system,” he said. “That way, when the aircraft lands, we can have the right part, the right person with the right tool or the right support already positioned. I firmly believe that we're at the embryonic stages of that as an industry.”
While the company continues to look for opportunities, perhaps in new areas, Sislian said, Bombardier faces the same constraint as the rest of the industry—a workforce shortage. “Do I think that we have enough brick-and-mortar capacity presently to meet the demand? The answer is yes. Do I think that we're going to need to grow our brick-and-mortar over the next five years? Yes. But do I think that we have enough human capacity? Not yet.”
Bombardier is working with local officials and schools in the regions it enters to develop a talent pipeline, which will help the company increase capacity within the same square footage.
Having its own centers helps to address the supply-chain issue, Sislian said. “Obviously, having your own MROs, you have a little more control over that,” he explained. “There’s a very, very close coordination between the MRO needs and our supply-chain capability.” Bombardier is able to balance its inventory between its original equipment manufacturing and MROs. “If parts are in scarce resources, then having your own MROs allows you to be able to move the materials to best suit the customers,” he said.
