Worldwide Customer Service & Service Center Network
Dassault Aviation
Who doesn’t like a good AOG story, right?!
Here’s one: an 8X operator called late in the evening from LAX with a generator failure and a flight the next afternoon. No problem, Dassault Falcon Jet’s new AOG organization launched a Falcon Airborne Support jet with parts and repair team at 4 a.m., arriving at LAX at the crack of dawn. Generator installed, the 8X took off on time and the FAS Falcon 900 pilots and technicians were home in New Jersey for dinner.
That story was related to me by Giovanni (Gio) Hanna, our can-do Operations Manager for DFJ’s new, independent Mobile Repair Team. Gio and his team are creating new rapid response capabilities for operators in the Americas.
Simply put, we’ve made AOG support in North America independent of our service center network. Too often we found our busy service centers too stretched to free up technicians for rapid response situations. Lest you think this is a Dassault problem, let me assure you it is industry wide, with some OEMs committing only to a four-day AOG response time. Our target is to be on site within hours of the event.
Gio started his new team last year with 11 dedicated technicians, all independent of service centers—all on “hot standby” for an AOG dispatch. Now the team is up to 19, with three more slots to fill shortly for a full complement.
Gio has placed his team in four locations in closest proximity to most AOGs: Teterboro; Van Nuys in Southern California; Stuart, Florida; and Centennial Airport in Denver. Each has a well-equipped mobile van for reaching an AOG that is within an easy drive. Three more vans are planned to be able to head in more than one direction when necessary. More team locations may be established if a pattern emerges that would put them closer to clusters of AOGs.
The Mobile Repair Team is of course supplemented by the Falcon Response Aircraft, which can pick up parts and teams and fly to more remote locations.
Gio and his group are on top of some pretty complex field repairs. For example, a Falcon 2000 experienced tail damage in Anchorage—in winter—. The Mobile Repair Team coordinated with the Falcon Command Center and Engineering, resulting ultimately in a new horizontal stabilizer being shipped to Alaska. In the meantime, Gio and team had placed the 2000 in a cargo hangar and rounded up a crane and scissor lifts—all the equipment, people, and parts to get this airplane back in the air.
In another case, they rushed to a Midwest city where a pick-up had plowed into a 7X wing at 45 MPH. Again, with Command Center and Engineering support, the wing was inspected in the field, winglets removed, internal structures reinforced, and the plane approved for a ferry to Dassault Falcon Service in Paris for a new wing.
It’s aviation: bad things happen to good airplanes, and we have to be ready. Statistics show we are quickly moving in a good direction. Previously, 70 percent of U.S. AOGs were addressed by teams from nearby authorized service facilities. Now that number is 30 percent, with 70 percent handled by our own Mobile Repair Team, and Gio vows to quickly get that number near 100 percent.
The objective, of course, is to keep you flying. I want to extend my thanks to Gio and his outstanding team for handling challenging repair situations with speed and technical excellence.
If you find yourself AOG, just remember, one call to the Command Center sets this in motion.
