In 1955, American aviation was the new tech industry and AAR Corp. was a startup company supplying parts to the industry. That foot in the door to the great boom of aviation helped set up AAR’s future as a worldwide company, who today assist customers from Chicago to London, to Singapore and Dubai. Through the growth, the company’s goal has remained straightforward, as Chris Jessup, chief commercial office, AAR, described.
“At AAR, we constantly search for the right thing to do for our customers, for our employees, for partners and for society,” said Jessup. “Our mission is to be the best at designing and delivering technical and operational solutions to enhance the efficiency and competitiveness of our commercial aviation and government customers.”
The company serves commercial and cargo customers, military and defense sector, plus leasing and financial institutions. AAR’s market solutions cover MRO Services, such airframe MRO, engineering, component repair, landing gears and wheels and brakes; Parts Supply for airframes and engines, including OEM solutions; Integrated Solutions, such as component repair and flight hour support; and manufacturing mobility systems.
Fiscal Year 2020 marks AAR’s 65 anniversary of delivering aviation services, and AAR celebrates record annual revenue and a proven position of financial strength heading into the future, added Jessup.
“AAR is the largest independent MRO in North America and third-largest worldwide. Our award-winning solutions are successfully executed with customers in over 100 countries. Even after 65 years we are still a nimble company that brings a lot of expertise to the market and its operations,” he said.
Jessup notes that some of the key highlights from the past 12 months for AAR have been:
Leveraging best-in-class services within Parts Supply –Trading and OEM solutions
Repair & Engineering and Integrated Solutions – government and commercial programs – to reinforce and grow each business and aviation services as a whole.
OEM Solutions announced several new and expanded distribution agreements with Unison, Leach International, Woodward, Inc. and AeroControlex
Integrated solutions – AAR awarded a $118M C-40 aircraft procurement and modification contract with Naval Air Systems Command in support of U.S. Marine Corps.
AAR Mobility Systems awarded a $125 million sole source firm-fixed-price (FFP) contract from the U.S. Air Force to produce and repair 463L Cargo Pallets.
MRO Services entered into a letter of intent with Air Canada to add new aircraft types and establish airframe maintenance Center of Excellence at Trois-Rivières MRO location and was awarded long-term contracts with new customers, including the Royal Netherlands Air Force to service CH-47 Chinook APU
And the 65-year-old company still has some new tricks up its sleeve; AAR is currently transforming itself into a digital company, tackling the world of unmanned and drone assisted repairs and utilizing augmented reality (AR) technology for work in some of its facilities.
The shift towards digital, Jessup said, is a holistic approach that AAR is taking to make themselves more efficient, intelligent and better decision makers – ultimately, making AAR a better service provider for their customers both internally and externally.
“For MRO, the digital blocks include going paperless, making inventory smarter and making MRO more efficient — including the use of drones and AR. Today, tasks cards and documentation are still mostly paper, so technicians walk back and forth between the aircraft to get their next assignment and task cards.
“We are reimagining their processes, where they all have a mobile device and everything they need is on that device. The idea is to tie images, documents and historical log page data together so that we start to run the learning algorithms against it,” Jessup said.
AAR’s goal of becoming paperless includes everything from integrated planning and execution to dynamic workforce management and mixed-reality collaboration.
Mixed-reality is something currently being put to good use at AAR’s Miami facility, where AR for hands-free workflow and communication is being trialed, using RealWear HMT-1 headsets and Librestream’s AR platform.
“With AR, a junior technician can show a master technician what he or she is doing and get instructions overlaid onto the tasks. AR will save master technicians’ time spent walking around the hangars answering questions, similar to how AAR’s engineers field frequent questions from their desks,” said Jessup.
AR technology is also being used by AAR to grant permissions before technicians cut and drill sheet metal. A technician can use the hands-free video, voice and photo capabilities to collaborate with a remote expert before making the cut.
AAR’s Miami facility is also piloting the company’s drone assisted inspection technology. Using a Donecle drone for Boeing 737 general visual inspections, AAR has seen a 50 percent reduction in time compared to traditional, manual procedures.
“The drone flies itself on a preplanned flight and takes 1,500-1,900 pictures per narrow-body aircraft. As AAR pursues FAA certification, an inspector is reviewing the photos and identifying follow-ups and lightning strikes, in parallel,” Jessup described.
Another part of their journey into the digital realm, AAR has developed, in-house, a closed-loop process for quality and safety management. Called APRISE, the tool includes everything from investigations to audit findings, customer feedback, injury reporting and import/export compliance.
“The tools within it — including self-audits, decision trees and investigation checklists — allow managers to immediately review and fix problems,” said Jessup.
AAR also developed HangarNotes — providing a sky view of the hangar floor, with each aircraft rendered to scale and color-coded to reflect its status. It is a way to see where aircraft are, by tail number, work overview and customer. And although AAR created HangarNotes to solve problems internally, they are considering commercializing it, Jessup added.
Tackling the Challenges
The challenges gripping aviation today are both old, the forecasted workforce shortage of A&P positions, and new – the COVID-19 pandemic. AAR is taking on both. For the former, the company teamed up with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in the development of the first maintenance SkillBridge program, launched in August of 2019.
“This program combines 18 semester credits of civil aviation maintenance training in preparation for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) knowledge test and FAA oral and practical exams. In addition, this course includes industry specific aircraft type training, resume building and an employee benefit workshop in a nine-week course. Upon program completion, students are ready to join the workforce. SkillBridge program participants will receive guaranteed interviews from AAR, but have the option to interview with other industry partners as well,” said Jessup.
A unique aspect about the SkillBridge program is that students do not have to have an aviation technical background. To date, each class has been split 50/50 between those students with aviation maintenance experience and those from other technical or mechanical backgrounds.
“Students with aviation experience have an expedited pathway to FAA certification and for those who have always desired to be in aviation, they now have a pathway to a career in aviation. After 18 months of on-the-job work experience at AAR, an individual can submit an application to the FAA to complete their airframe certification process as well,” Jessup continued.
As challenging as the COVID-19 challenge has been for their customers, stockholders and employees, the impacts of the pandemic have been largely beyond AAR’s control, notes Jessup. Thusly, the company has been focused on what is in their control and what they can affect.
“We worked hard to stay ahead of the declining market for our services and products, resized our business and otherwise reduced costs,” he said. “Our management team has acted decisively and aggressively to operate in a consistently excellent way, adjust operations to meet market needs, reduce costs, and improve our liquidity so we look into a strong future. These actions have been taken while focusing on the safety and well-being of our employees, which has remained our number one concern.
“We are proud that our team has come together to help navigate this storm, and we look forward to the future, as we will emerge from this pandemic a leaner and more focused company.”
