A growing trend I’ve observed in my consulting and auditing activities involves Maintenance Repair and Overhaul MROs) organisations opening up affiliated aftermarket distributorships. For example, an MRO opens up a separate but affiliated firm, and gets that distributor firm to be accredited to the ASA-100. From all appearances there seems to be many benefits for the MRO with this arrangement, and these will be reviewed. This trend also extends to OEMs, Airlines, and tear-down/disassembly facili...

I love reading about facts, figures, and forecasts, or as my military friends would say, F3. I come across quite a few of these and thought you’d enjoy reading them in summary form. Each entry is properly cited. I’ll do these for you once or twice a year. Airbus forecasts nearly 37,400 new aircraft valued at US$5.8 Trillion required over 20 years.1 Fleet will more than double to 48,000 in 20 Years based on traffic growing at 4.4% per year. Growth drivers include private consumption increasing 2....

Like many of you, I’m a ‘morning person’ meaning I go to sleep early and rise early to start my day. When challenged with a big project, my preference is to wake up early and get to work to put in that long day. When it’s time to go home, I leave on time even though I may have worked extended hours by coming in very early. In discussions with persons of similar dispositions, it seems we all have one common gripe; very few people notice our extra effort. For example, we routinely may come in hour...

I’d like to add a new choice of terms to our ever evolving aviation lexicon. When an aircraft reaches the end of its life and it’s being parted out, we’re not removing the parts- we’re harvesting the parts from the legacy asset. A word that has managed to survive the trendy, revisionist makeovers is ‘cannibalize’, as in cannibalizing aircraft parts. Used interchangeably is the equally, potentially offensive word, ‘robbed’ aircraft parts. My, oh my, I’m wont to retreat to a safe place and curl in...

Can I order a Big Mac with bitcoin? Not yet, but bitcoin (cryptocurrency) excites many, and is based entirely on blockchain. But is blockchain ready for prime-time in aviation? Use of popular words is observed to cycle through articles, literature, and social media with some regularity. For example, use of the terms ‘core competency’ and ‘paradigm’ seem to be waning. On the other hand, use of the word ‘disruptive’ seems to be peaking. Initially, use of this word demanded our attention; a herald ...