Airbus Canada has officially moved A220 material management services to its Satair unit, marking the integration of one of the last vestiges of Bombardier's former C Series program into Airbus, the companies revealed on Thursday. The transfer of responsibility took place on July 1, at which time Satair took charge of planning and inventory, purchasing, quality inspection, certification, warehousing and distribution, customer order handling, AOG handling, and initial provisioning and tool lease.
Speaking with reporters during a Tuesday webcast, Airbus A220 v-p of customer services and product policy Rob Dewar called the announcement “really positive news” given the resulting increase in A220 support footprint and the benefits associated with Satair now taking responsibility for all Airbus programs. “It is, of course, a key step in the integration of the A220 program into Airbus,” said Dewar, who served as the C Series program head with Bombardier before Airbus took control and changed the model name. “We have had a lot of discussions with our customers and the feedback from them has been very positive.”
Satair CEO Bart Reijnen noted that Satair received certification for assuming A220 support responsibility from global certification authorities in May after several months of preparation. “We are now two months down the road [since the July 1 takeover] and that means we have those experiences and we will continue to improve the whole setup and processes, which fortunately has demonstrated to work very, very well,” he explained. “For Satair, it was one of our top priorities of the year in onboarding the A220 and its services and the fact that this has taken place and seems to work very well…is something we are proud about.”
Under the new arrangement, Airbus Canada will continue to operate the A220’s customer service center and base the program’s service engineering team in Montreal.
Reijnen added that Satair plans to stock 50 percent more high-demand parts and 13 percent more A220 parts overall than Bombardier did.
Now carrying A220 parts in warehouses in Copenhagen and at Washington-Dulles Airport in the U.S., Satair plans next to place more parts for the narrowbody at a facility in Singapore by the end of the year and locate ground service equipment at a new building now under construction outside Washington, D.C.
“So we are step-by-step making use of all our warehouse footprint around the world, existing for Satair,” said Reijnen. “But we have concentrated first of all on the United States and on Europe because the bulk of the [A220] customers…are there. But we will transition into Asia as the next step.”
