Lack of capacity in the overstretched large business jet completions market is encouraging new entrants to a sector that has previously been dominated by a handful of specialists.
While manufacturers of large-cabin business jets - including Bombardier, Dassault and Gulfstream - design and build their interiors in-house, Airbus, Boeing and other corporate airliners tend to be converted by third-party houses such as Jet Aviation and Lufthansa Technik.
At EBACE, new Swiss company AMAC Aerospace outlined its plans to enter the market opening two hangars at Basle airport by next year, one, at 9,000m2 (96,900ft2), large enough for a Boeing 747. The privately funded start-up is headed by Heinz Kohli, who resigned last year as chief executive of Jet Aviation.
His former employer and neighbour officially opened its 9,600m2 widebody hangar at Basle airport on the eve of EBACE. The facility, just over the border from Switzerland in France, is large enough to simultaneously house an Airbus A380 and 747, as well as smaller business jets.
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© AirbusAirbus has published a new artist's impression of the A350 XWB cabin |
Meanwhile, Airbus is stepping up work at its new Toulouse Corporate Jet Centre, formerly run by its EADS sister division Sogerma. The centre, which delivered its first aircraft - an A320 - in March, only handles single-aisle aircraft and was set up by Airbus last year to ensure sufficient capacity in the market.
The centre will complete four interiors a year but, despite this, Arnaud Martin, the airframer's vice-president corporate jet and VIP programme, says he expects there to be an industry-wide shortage of capacity "for the next two years at least".
Lufthansa Technik said at the show it had signed two letters of commitment for the completion of a second Boeing 747-8 and its first 787 and that it intended to open an additional completion line for widebodies in Hamburg. Walter Heerdt, senior vice-president for marketing and sales, says there is still "quite a backlog" of demand for large airliner conversions. "It will level out eventually but I do not see a dip before 2014," he says.
At the smaller end of the market, UK-based maintenance and fixed-base operation company Inflite is moving into cabin refurbishments, focusing initially on former BAE Systems Avro airliners at its Stansted base. "No one else in the UK is doing conversions. We think it's about time there was," says Inflite managing director Steve Buckingham.
Source: Flight International
