Rockwell Collins president Clayton Jones

On the Record with:
CLAYTON JONES, PRESIDENT, ROCKWELL COLLINS

Rockwell Collins Navigates New Course

Unlike Humpty Dumpty, who couldn't be put back together, Rockwell Collins has done a good job of reassembling the company after the divestiture of its space and defense businesses.

"As a result of that divestiture, we were able to put Rockwell Collins back together in a more integrated fashion," said company president Clayton Jones. "Through the first three years of the new Rockwell Collins, revenues have grown 17.5% annually. Growth rate this year will be 5% to 6%, which is good considering the downturn in air transport."

Jones said growth will be back to double digits next year. The company will accomplish that by "optimizing the core of the business and presenting a common face to the customer."

One of those competencies will be to transition commercial products into the military. Rockwell Collins has been very successful in accomplishing that with its commercial avionics systems, and hopes to do the same with systems developed originally for corporate jets. Recently, the company sold the integrated processing cabinet for the Pro Line 21 avionics system to the U.S. Air Force for retrofit on the Boeing KC-135 tanker.

Collins is featuring its Advanced Flight Deck development tool here at NBAA 2000.

Products are beginning to move in the other direction as well, said Jones. HF radios from the military are finding applications in business jets, as are Ethernet buses from Boeing's 747-400.

The second major competency for Rockwell Collins is a relatively new one-in-flight entertainment. "We are expanding our business horizons," Jones told Show News. "We were defined as a cockpit avionics company and we felt we had more capability. The first expansion was when we bought Hughes-Aviacom and its inflight entertainment (IFE) business. Now we have Sony Transcom for narrow-body aircraft."

In its latest contract, the company has hooked up with Australia's News Corporation to provide television and Internet content to the cabin through its In Flight Network group.

Jones calls IFE one of Rockwell Collins' two "major growth engines." The other is aftermarket service and maintenance. "We're continuing to move aggressively into service and support, and in making Collins Aviation Services a profit center. This is an underserved market, and we've grown the business 20% to 25% per year over the last two years," he said.

An even newer initiative for Rockwell Collins is its Integrated Information Systems business, which Jones said will have its first product on the market by mid-2001.

That will be a single, airborne datalink server that receives data from either the ground or from satellites, separating important operational transmissions targeted at the cockpit from those being used by passengers in the cabin. Right now the closest thing to that capability is the airborne communications addressing and reporting system (ACARS), which requires a separate box in the cockpit.

"That enables a number of applications," noted Jones. "In the cockpit you could transmit maintenance diagnostics and receive real-time graphical weather for improved safety in flight. Changes in flight plans can be transmitted. And it will clearly have applications in the business aircraft market."

Rockwell Collins is also riding high with its Flight Dynamics subsidiary, one of the dominant providers of head-up guidance systems (HGS) to commercial, regional and business aircraft markets.

Big news in the HGS field is an upgrade to Flight Dynamics' systems that is aimed at reducing runway incursions. Featured as the cover story in Aviation Week & Space Technology in August, the Surface Guidance System could reduce the 60% of runway incursions that are the result of pilot deviations, as well as many of the 15% that are due to controller errors, according to Portland, OR-based Flight Dynamics.
"Rockwell Collins has a remarkably strong position in all markets, and we're now aggressively moving into the business and regional market," concluded Jones.

By Barry Rosenberg