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On the Record With
LARRY FLYNN, PRESIDENT, PRODUCT SUPPORT, GULFSTREAM AEROSPACE, & PRESIDENT, GENERAL DYNAMICS AVIATION SERVICES
Operators are spending more money this year on refurbishing their aircraft, repainting them and upgrading their avionics. "What I call discretionary spending is definitely up," says Larry Flynn, president of both product support for Gulfstream Aerospace and General Dynamics Aviation Services. "We are having a very good year. Flying hours are up, the fleet size is growing at a good rate, and people are spending money."
Business has increased noticeably at all 11 service centers run by Flynn's two groups. (Gulfstream operates six and General Dynamics Aviation Services five. All handle Gulfstream aircraft, while GDAS also works on Challenger, Hawker and Falcon aircraft.)
"We will work on more than 6,000 aircraft this year—we're still in the growth mode," says Flynn. "We actually grew through the bad economy on the service side; we added locations, added people, and kept on investing in product support during the downturn. That investment is paying off in dividends with the economy coming back." He estimates his group now handles the maintenance on about 70% of the Gulfstream fleet.
Major achievements in the last year include the winning of the FAA's Diamond Award for Training by all 11 centers, and a huge increase in business at Luton, England, that has compelled Gulfstream to double the hangar space to 54,000 square feet after buying the business from Signature only a year before.
"Demand for services far exceeded our expectations," says Flynn, even with the knowledge that some business would flow in as Marshall Aerospace ceased to be an authorized service center after 35 years. Flynn believes Luton is easily the largest corporate transient airport for London. "More than 1,600 Gulfstreams went through there last year. No other airport even comes close," he says.
Back home, Gulfstream has topped industry surveys for product support, but Flynn looked to the bottom of his ratings to see what he could do better. What he found was that parts pricing was an irritant to his customers.
"So we lowered the price of about 6,000 items and introduced a Meet the Quote program that would match any lower price of comparable parts from other sources. That will expire at the end of the year but we are contemplating an extension," he says.
Two years ago Flynn's group bought a G100 and dedicated it to satisfying customers through rapid delivery of parts. It has now flown over 400 missions, and Flynn is delighted both with the service and customer response. "We have taken the airlines out of the service business—if your airplane is broken and it's under warranty, we fly the parts and the technician and fix your airplane free of charge. That's the neatest thing we've done.
"We want to stay No. 1 in product support. If what's between you and your customers is an airliner . . . well, we figured out a way around that and put a lot of money where our mouth is with that airplane. We think it's worth it."
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