Despite Learjet woes, lots of activity at Bombardier Wichita

Bombardier’s Wichita site covers 1.3 million square feet of buildings, but only a fraction of that is for manufacturing Learjets — its best-known product.

Since the beginning of 2015, it has been a rough period for Learjet, which Bombardier – a Canadian maker of trains and planes based in Montreal – acquired in 1990.

First came Bombardier’s January 2015 announcement that it would pause development of the Learjet 85 and lay off 1,000 people, including 620 in Wichita. Nine months later, Bombardier announced it was canceling the 85 altogether — the 53-year-old brand’s only new airplane program since 2013.

And in February, reeling from extra costs and delays on the C Series and Global 7000/8000 programs, and with a new CEO at the helm, Bombardier announced an additional 220 layoffs in Wichita over the next two years — 150 in the business aircraft unit and 70 in other operations at the site on the west side of Wichita Eisenhower National Airport.

Despite all that, there are about 1,700 people at Bombardier Wichita today, due in part to a diverse site with a number of operations not directly tied to Learjet.

The company’s Wichita service center, which at one time catered exclusively to the service and repair of Learjets, has expanded in recent years to include factory service of Bombardier’s large-cabin and Canadian-built Challenger and Global business jets.

There’s also the Special Missions Group, which focuses on customizing existing Bombardier aircraft for defense and other special-purpose work. It has a shop that specializes in quickly prototyping parts — including use of a 3-D printer — to accomplish that work.

And then there’s the Bombardier Flight Test Center, which flight-tests all Bombardier aircraft, including its new C Series airliners. Though a number of industry analysts have pointed to the C Series as one of the main reasons why Bombardier shelved the Learjet 85, the new narrowbody airliner program has “made up a significant portion of our flight test this year,” said Tom Bisges, Bombardier vice president of flight test.

“This is an important site for Bombardier — and Wichita,” added Tonya Sudduth, Bombardier’s general manager of Learjet programs and Wichita site leader.

Learjet 75

Of the more than a million square feet of buildings at Bombardier Wichita, the manufacturing of its Learjet 70 and Learjet 75 occurs in a roughly 36,000-square-foot production line, which last week was full with six Learjet 75s in various stages of assembly.

“Right now they’re primarily 75s because that’s where the demand is,” Sudduth said of the absence of Learjet 70s on the production line. She is a former Koch Industries accountant who joined Bombardier 15 years ago.

That line is where workers mate the wings — manufactured in Canada — with the fuselage, which is manufactured at Bombardier’s plant in Belfast, Northern Ireland. From there, workers install the Honeywell engines, mechanical parts, electrical system, avionics and interior.

The jet is then moved to another building on the Wichita site where it is painted.

“Everything we do here is done in a sequence,” said Mike Mitchell, director of operations at the Learjet plant.

He said production employees work in two shifts. He declined to say how many employees work on the production line.

A Bombardier spokeswoman said the company doesn’t discuss employment levels within each unit at the Wichita site.

The Learjet 70 and 75 are the only business jets currently manufactured in Wichita. Both airplanes were announced in 2012 and entered service in late 2013.

It’s not clear what’s next for Learjet. The only new jet on the drawing board was the Learjet 85, and with that program canceled last year — Bombardier officials at the time cited soft demand in the midsize business jet market and the need to focus its resources on the C Series and Global 7000/8000 programs as the reasons behind the cancellation — there currently are no other new Learjet models in the works.

Officials wouldn’t say specifically what’s next for the Learjet brand, beyond efforts earlier this year to form a sales team exclusively for those jets.

Service expansion

Not too far from the Learjet production line is Bombardier’s Wichita service center. For years, the center has focused on routine and heavy maintenance of Learjets; a spokeswoman said there are more than 2,200 flying today.

The Learjet service center has 12 bays to work on Learjets, with capacity to fit as many as 18 of them in the hangar.

The company broadened the service center’s capabilities to include routine and heavy maintenance of its Challenger and Global jets — there are more than 1,600 Challengers and more than 700 Globals in operation today.

Last year the company added an 80,000-square-foot service center for the bigger jets in a building that was to be used for the Learjet 85 program.

“We now have capacity across the product line,” said Matt Melillo, general manager of the Wichita service center. “I can fit five Globals in this hangar.”

The service center expansion meant “we had to train up more people,” Melillo said. “There was a lot of requests to handle more capacity in the (North American service center) network.”

Other Bombardier service centers with similar capabilities in the U.S. are in Dallas; Tucson; Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; and Windsor Locks, Conn.

Melillo said that even with the addition of the Challenger and Global service, “we probably do more Learjet business than any of our other service centers.”

As part of the addition of Challenger and Global service, the center has also expanded its component repair and overhaul (CRO) business, Melillo said. It’s one of the areas at the Wichita site that is growing.

“By mid next year we hope to have a 24/7 operation,” he said. The CRO shop is currently running two shifts five days a week.

“We have added personnel in the last quarter,” Melillo said, adding that hiring in CRO will continue as it moves to an around-the-clock operation.

‘We do it all’

Also a robust business right now for the Wichita site is the Bombardier Flight Test Center, which was established in 1995. Its biggest business right now is production flight test of its C Series CS100 and CS300 jetliners.

Last week, there were at least four C Series aircraft at the site: two CS100s and two CS300s.

The center comprises a number of hangars on site for the C Series — including a leased hangar at Air Capital Flight Line, the former Boeing Wichita on South Oliver — as well as for a variety of other Bombardier business jets, including a Learjet 75, a Global 5000, a Challenger 300 and a Challenger 600. Flight test of those aircraft is typically for certification of upgrades to them, such as updated avionics or on-board wireless internet.

“We do it all,” Bisges said of the center’s mission to flight-test all Bombardier airplanes. “We do the Globals, the Challengers, the water bombers. To be able to work on all these product lines … it’s why I’ve stayed here.”

The flight test center also has offices for pilots and engineers, and a telemetry area in which test aircraft in flight are continually transmitting flight data and test flights are observed by Bombardier personnel on the ground.

It houses rooms for equipment that Bisges calls SITS, or system integrated test stand. For instance, the room that houses the SITS for the C Series is like a large computer server room with the complete cockpit of the jet alongside other equipment. The SITS allows engineers to electronically test in flight how the airplane’s avionics interact with its other systems without ever actually flying the plane.

“Our … goal is to make the actual (flight) test on the airplane as boring as possible,” Bisges said.

Later this year, the center expects to receive its first Global 7000 flight test aircraft. The Global 7000 will be Bombardier’s largest jet to date, accommodating a crew of four and 19 passengers with a 7,300-nautical-mile range.

“We expect to see the first one by the end of the year,” said Steve Patrick, director of flight operations and part of the Global 7000 flight test team.

Operating under flight test is Bombardier’s Special Missions Group. The organization specializes in specialized engineering and quick-turn modifications and has broadened its scope to include work on special missions aircraft using Bombardier jets.

One of the programs the group is currently competing for is the Air Force’s next-generation Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System. Bombardier is partnering with Lockheed Martin and Raytheon for a contract to replace the current JSTARS fleet, which comprises 18 modified Boeing 707-300s. Bombardier is proposing to use a modified Global 6000 in the competition.

“I think we have a pretty good shot at this one as long as there’s fair competition,” said David Jones, Bombardier director of special missions.

Many years ahead?

The variety of activities underway at Bombardier’s Wichita site demonstrates the company’s commitment to Wichita, officials said.

The company is hiring more workers in the service center and flight test, they said. And there is new momentum for Learjet, with the decision earlier this year to form a sales team devoted exclusively to the brand as well as the addition of a new pocket door in the $13.8 million Learjet 75 — announced at the European Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition in Switzerland in May — that will be standard equipment on the jet and which cuts down noise in the passenger cabin.

But they wouldn’t say specifically what’s next for the Learjet brand.

“We believe we’ve got many, many years ahead of us on the Learjet platform,” Sudduth said.

But the next big thing for Learjet is important, said aviation forecaster Rolland Vincent, because you can only have so much momentum from enhancements to existing products for so long.

What’s more, he said, the company needs to be churning out more Learjets to support its Learjet service center because owners typically stop servicing their airplanes at the factory five years after taking delivery.

“I think they’ve been generating about three (Learjets) a month,” he said. “That level of activity, it’s OK, you can probably make some money at that level.

“But if you drop down too low it gets harder and harder to sustain your business.”

Bombardier, Vincent said, needs a strategy for Learjet, especially with the Learjet 85 program shelved.

“It’s absolutely unclear they have one (strategy) other than steady as she goes. What are you doing? It’s not clear other than sustaining,” he said.

“There’s a lot more they could be doing, and it doesn’t necessarily have to cost them a lot of capital.”

This story was originally published June 15, 2016 at 4:01 PM with the headline "Despite Learjet woes, lots of activity at Bombardier Wichita."