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Aviation History
1997
1997 - 0963.PDF
ROMANIA establish a maintenance centre for Western- type aircraft, with approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration and European Joint Aviation Authorities QAA). The second aim is to secure more manufacturing subcontracts for the company, from "well-established com panies" abroad. As far as licensed aircraft production is con cerned, however, Romaero's ambitions do not go beyond the continued assembly of the Islander and its Defender 4000 derivative. The "Rombac One-Eleven" saga has clearly left a sour taste in Cucu's mouth. "We are mature enough to change our approach," says Cucu. "We know where we stand, we can see how the global aerospace industry is developing, and to suggest that we can compete with Boeing and Airbus in pro moting a 100-seater is ludicrous." LOOKING AHEAD By mid-1997, the factory space formerly dedi cated to One-Eleven production will be made available for other work. Alongside continuing projects, the company is negotiating two new maintenance programmes. The first will be a joint venture with US- based leasing company C-S Aviation. An agree ment between the two companies was signed at die Farnborough air show in September 1996, aimed at forming a new 50:50 joint venture, to be called C-S Romaero. The operation is to be based in Bucharest, and will offer heavy mainte nance services to European operators for nar- rowbodies including the Airbus A3 20, Boeing 727 and 737 and the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 andMD-80. "All documents related to the joint venture are already finalised as far as we are concerned," says Cucu. The companies are now waiting for official state approval, which Cucu expects by die end of April. C-S Romaero will be the first of a kind of partnership which the Romanian company hopes will lead to its eventual full privatisation. "Our plans are to find new investors and to organise joint ventures by capital addition. This way, the capital added to the company will remain with die company to help us finance our future programmes," says Cucu. Some 70% of the company is in the hands of the Government-run State Ownership Fund, with roughly 30% in the hands of parliament, through a so-called "private-ownership fund". Early privatisation attempts by die post- Communist Government placed a total of 1.5 % of die company's shares in die hands of some 2,000 private citizens - mostly current and for mer company employees - but the wheels of this "mass privatisation" plan soon ground to a halt, and are only now being set in motion again by the recently-elected administration of Presi dent Emil Constantinescu. Cucu says that the State will now try to find "one or two strategic investors" to take over die Government's stake in the company. "If this does not happen, our intention is to press [the Government] to put these shares on die market for sale to private interests - although we would prefer it if the state could find strategic investors, because they will come widi business plans for future programmes," says Cucu. On 5 February, die company signed an agree- mentwidi Lockheed Martin aimed at establish ing a repair centre in Romania for thrust reversers and nacelle components for the General Electric CF6 turbofan. Constantin Dinischiotu, executive director for sales and marketing, says that the company hopes to have this new centre up and running "by the second half of this year". "We see a lot of potential for this work, because these reversers are on the Boeing 747 and 767, and on the Airbus A300 and A310," • The One-Eleven production line has fallen silent THE ROMAERO Rombac BAC One-Eleven programme is rooted in former Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu's ambitions to make Romania independent of the Soviet Union. As a maverick among the former Communist Bloc leaders, Ceausescu had refused to take part in the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and later exploited initially good contacts with the West to secure funding for a poli cy of massive industrial expansion. As part of this policy, Romaero was to develop and build a 100-seat medium-haul jet airliner entirely domestically. "This was totally unrealistic," says Romaero's executive director for sales and marketing, Constantin Dinischiotu. "The develop ment and manufacture of a new aircraft type was too much of a burden for the company to take on." Co-operation with British Aerospace on the BAC One-Eleven began in 1975, with Romaero - then called Interprinderea de Reparatii Material Aeronautic (IRMA) - starting production of subassemblies such as the tailplane, elevator, rudder and lead ing edges of the wing and fin. In 1979, the co-operation was extended, with BAe awarding Romaero a licence to produce series 495 and 560 versions of the aircraft. The first all-Romanian-built "Rombac" One-Eleven rolled off the production line in August 1982, flying for the first time one month later. Nine aircraft had been pro duced by 1992, and were sold to domestic Romanian carriers Tarom and Romavia. New noise and pollution restrictions, along with the arrival of the competing Fokker 100 on the market in the late 1980s, led the company to realise that the programme would succeed in the longer term only if the aircraft were re-engined and modernised. In 1982, Romaero started to negotiate with Dee Howard in the USA over a re- engineing programme using the 67kN (15,000lb)-thrust Rolls-Royce Tay 650 turbofan, which would have boosted per formance and efficiency by 20%. The upgraded aircraft, known as the Airstar 2500, was to be a 96- to 115-passenger Tay-powered Series 560 airframe with a Honeywell glass cockpit. The maker claimed that it would be 15% to 20% cheaper than die competing Fokker 100. According to Romaero, die programme suffered in the 1980s from lack of support by die Romanian Government, which was busy worrying about the growing national debt. An initial order in 1990 for 50 aircraft from Associated Aerospace fell flat when that company was wound up because of financial difficulties. It seemed as if the One-Eleven's for tunes had changed in 1993, when the manufacturer won a launch order for 11 aircraft and five options from US carrier Kiwi International Airlines, in exchange for a $1 million investment in Kiwi. The first Kiwi aircraft was to be deliv ered in 1995, but Romaero failed to find the necessary $100 million funding, and faced die problem that Dee Howard's re- engineing programme was halted in 1991. Dinischiotu says that, even today, the Airstar 2500 could still be a competitive product, but Romaero is not in a financial position to go ahead widi die programme. FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 9 - 15 April 1997 27
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