General Electric Aircraft Engines president James McNerney says he is excited about Farnborough 2000 and his company's participation. "We will be in a position to make some major announcement," says McNearney. He talks to Karen Walker about prospects for a marketplace that covers everything from military to commercial; from the regional jet up to the new breed of very large aircraft.
Q: Which areas on the commercial airliner side of your market do you anticipate being hot at Farnborough 2000?
A: We are fortunately positioned here with a lot of discussions going on with a lot of customers. Those are on top of GE's strong customer base. The backlog is particularly strong in the regional business. The only thing that seems to slow down orders in that sector relates to unions and scope clauses; it seems to be the only thing that remains in the way of unbridled growth. It's a consumer driven market that serves a fundamental consumer need.
We are trying to fight a two-front war, making sure we are in position to secure our strong position on narrowbodies and, secondly, providing our customers with services that extend well beyond spare parts to leasing, how to use inventory and a lot of other after-market programmes. It is not an either/or. We have to do both and we don't want to slow down.
We always build a conservative market outlook and we have some bearish forecasts still. It's always smart to be paranoid. But we have got the right cost levels in place and we have structured our plan that way so that there can be more upside than downside.
As for the decision to single-source the engine on this plane, it will never be totally behind us. But I think it is largely mitigated by the fact that this is a superior engine/aircraft solution offering superior performance and economics. So eventually, you win the argument.
GE works with each customer to tailor the system to their requirements and provides all that is needed to get them up and running. Then we can provide services such as parts ordering, service bulletins and technical manuals over the site.
I also think that our customers should define the environment, not our competitors. So I want to be ready with more functionality, such as auctions.
Source: Flight Daily News