JUSTIN WASTNAGE / BASLE, HAMBURG & LONDON
Delivery deadlines, staffing shortages and cost pressures are forcing completion centres to change the way they do business
The corporate jet business used to be simple. The ultra-rich, who could afford not to have to queue at airports, converted aircraft into extensions of their homes. True to the old maxim - if you needed to ask the price, you couldn't afford it.
The past decade has seen a three-fold increase in the value of corporate jet sales as prices have fallen and aircraft have made their way to facilities around the world for completion - a combination of interior design and engineering.
Although the firms specialising in these completions remain coy about details such as project values, balance sheets point to a reducing profit margin, despite the increase in demand. This is due to extra costs that have accompanied increased competition as the market has become more mainstream, in part, because of fractional ownership and other market changes. Yet, major players are meeting these challenges, unimaginable even five years ago, with technical innovation and better business practices.
One of the most obvious problems facing the sector is that of finite resources. The skilled personnel and hangar space required to equip a narrowbody as a luxury living space is limited, and centres are forced to compete with each other to retain employee loyalty.
Whereas scarce resources would normally allow companies to raise prices, downward pressure has been exerted by new kinds of customers buying corporate jets. As this pressure on aircraft prices has allowed the market to expand, the coterie of private individuals purchasing flying villas has been joined by corporations and sports teams, all much more used to scrutinising the bottom line. These customers demand the same professionalism as they receive from any other supplier. Deadlines now have to be met, going over budget is no longer acceptable and, more worryingly for the completion centres, relationship- building is no longer sufficient on its own. First-time customers shop around in a way that was unthinkable in the 1980s.
Within reach
The influx of new customers has much to do with the introduction in 1996 of the Boeing and General Electric joint-venture, the Boeing Business Jet (BBJ), a modified Boeing 737-700NG with a range of over 11,000km (6,000nm). It suddenly put intercontinental flight in a narrowbody aircraft within the reach of top corporations and individuals.
Jerry Gore, president of Gore Design, a San Antonio, Texas-based completion centre says that the BBJ's emergence "really affected the capacity of the market". Although his firm concentrates on the super deluxe end of the market, the "VVIP" widebody completions, other centres are now turning away work.
Dayton Robinson, director of completion oversight at Boeing Business Jets, says the completion-centre market is at saturation point. "It is almost impossible to meet the level of demand," he says.
The chief attraction of aircraft like the BBJ, or the less-popular Airbus A319 CJ, is that they are large enough to accommodate an office and bedrooms as well as living space. Lufthansa Technik performed only one narrowbody completion in 1996, whereas this year it will send six BBJs and two widebodies out of its Hamburg facilities, now hived off from the maintenance arm. Despite what amounts to around a seven-fold increase in workload since 1996, Lufthansa Technik has only had to double its man hours to carry out the additional completions by developing procedures similar to a traditional production line.
The increased workflow through such facilities has enabled engineers to specialise on one single part of the completion - electrics, cabinets or in-flight entertainment for example - picking up speed with each subsequent aircraft and meaning that more aircraft can go through completion at any one time. If engineers can build cabinets to a semi-modular design, while retaining the freedom to interpret the customer's needs, a lot of time can be saved.
"Behind each unique interior there is no need to re-invent the wheel, "says Joachim von Holtzapfel, Lufthansa Technik's sales director for VIP and executive jets. Traditional skills associated with interiors - carpentry, cabinet building and sewing - have also been made quicker by computers. Jerry Gore estimates the use of computer-numerically-controlled machinery, linked to computer-assisted- design software, has cut production times by 70%. The quality is higher too, with wastage down as much as 150%, even with materials such as silk.
Yet, if time savings have been found in these areas, the changing demands of customers in onboard electronics has placed additional hurdles in the way of reducing time spent in the hangar. While tastes have changed across the board, with minimalist chic largely replacing garishness, attention has shifted to two areas: comfort control and in-flight communications.
Rainer Albecker, vice president of Basle-based Jet Aviation says that while many specialist suppliers exist that did not 10 years ago, the pace of technological change means customers demand cutting-edge land-based technology in an aircraft environment which cannot accommodate it.
The super-rich adopt the latest technology early, and are unwilling to compromise. Completion centres must explain what is possible and what is not, and create realistic expectations for customers unused to the notion that some problems cannot be solved at any price.
A different challenge applies to balancing the demands of in-flight entertainment and onboard ambience. Explosions in movies played back on digital versatile disk (DVD) video systems, relayed via seven surround sound speakers can reach decibel levels verging on the pain threshold. The problem is the ambient noise inside aircraft - dialogue has to be audible above the 70dB of a BBJ, but a car chase, say, would deafen.
Lufthansa Technik is working on a system to reduce the difference between these two extremes, and Boeing says noise-reduction techniques could lower noise to 52dB. Jet Aviation believes the solution lies in active noise cancellation, involving a 180í shift in frequency emission. This is being trialled in smaller aircraft.
Quality of life, or "wellness" control is a prime factor in completions: customers want to control temperature and humidity in multiple zones of an aircraft.
Project management
This requires a massive change in the way interiors are engineered, and are typical of the kind of problem-solving that plays part of the initial design phase.
Perhaps the most significant factor in reducing downtime and increasing productivity has been project management. "When centres were only completing one or two aircraft, the teams just worked until the jobs were done. These days, projects are tracked backwards from delivery date with all key milestones marked," says Robinson. He points to the creation of dedicated project management teams and the use of project management software as examples of how seriously internal deadlines are taken.
As part of this project management, most centres, led by Ozark Aircraft Systems, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, use three-dimensional computer models and plywood mock-ups are being increasingly used to identify design challenges and to prevent customers changing their minds close to delivery. This also gives engineers a headstart on the certification of more unusual requests. The tale that employees at Lufthansa Technik tell is of the engineering solution found to comply with an order for an open fireplace complete with chimney. Bullet-proof glass housing around the flame and a ventilated flue were all on the verge of being certified before the customer changed his mind.
Interiors
Airworthiness authorities have, however, focused their attention on VIP interiors in recent years. The cabin fire on the Swissair McDonnell Douglas MD-11 in September 1998 that led to the fatal crash off the coast of Newfoundland concentrated minds on the airborne use of consumer electronics. Claus Bauer, Lufthansa Technik's operations manager for executive jets, says that as customers moved up from small jets to narrowbodies, "they could no longer take on coffee percolators and microwaves they had bought at the hardware store". Plastic casing around off-the-shelf microwave ovens, for example, does not conform to the burn tests required for an airliner, and must be replaced with stainless steel, and domestic appliances do not meet US Federal Aviation Administration flammability test requirements and have to be completely rewired.
Completion centres used to overlook such considerations. Refitting an airliner was considered a "minor modification" covered by FAA 4037, which was originally designed for fitting a mere radio, rather than a $25,000 multimedia system. But now, under revised FAR/JAR chapter 25, every component has to be subjected to the same standards as those on a commercial airliner, and the completed aircraft has to apply for a supplemental type certificate. This can be time-consuming for the completion centres, which have to provide staff to liaise with airworthiness teams.
Strictly enforced certification criteria is another major change in the way completion centres operate. "The first Convair 880 we completed 20 years ago had shagpile carpet and a domestic turntable that would jump when you walked near it," says Albecker. Now Jet Aviation has a whole business unit dedicated to working through the bureaucracy of certification, and has a team in San Antonio, Texas, conducting burn tests on any material used in the interiors. Internal wiring, housing and securing clips all have to be modified before they are used in the galley of a Boeing Business Jet or Airbus Corporate Jet.
But in some areas the difference between equipping an aircraft for civil use (part 121) and for private use (part 91a) is significant. Airliners, for example, cannot have fixed doors between sections of the aircraft. Business aircraft, on the other hand, need to separate the bedrooms, offices and living spaces, which is permissible in most cases. "The problem," says Lufthansa Technik's Bauer, "is when the aircraft are also used for charter". His team worked with the German aviation authority, the LBA, to get false doors certified for use on a government aircraft that could, under the country's constitution, theoretically be used by that country's people.
"It is a process of convincing the authorities of the intention of the rules. You know that unless you we can reach compromise over the spirit of the regulations, the aircraft can't leave Hamburg."
Because of the lengthy certification process, completion centres impose design freezes as part of their process. Typically, designers will kick ideas around with customers over a six-month period, looking for problems and assessing feasibility, after which time, a design freeze is imposed and no further changes permitted. "Eat into this," says Gore, "and bang goes your delivery date."
Today there is a much greater recognition of the trade-off between weight and range, says Jet Aviation's Albecker: "Customers are told the maximum range by the aircraft manufacturers and are increasingly likely to lose specification in the interiors if it would reduce this range."
Challenge
Von Holtzapfel concurs. The Hamburg-based completion centre has investedin creating patented light-weight materials with which to construct interiors. The company estimates its recently-completed Boeing Business Jets for Netjets weighed 1.5t less than those completed by Raytheon.
The material has to be bonded to slivers of wood, marble or synthetics in a way that is not only invisible, but able to meet certification issues, such as burn tests, impact and rigidity standards.
In the light of these challenges, and with demand rising, completion centres are learning fast as they face a future revolutionised by the increasing accessibility of private jet travel.
Source: Flight International
