For nearly six decades, Duncan Aviation has been a leader in the business aviation industry, providing comprehensive business and general aviation services to aircraft registered around the world. Aviation customers are smart and they seek the best value for their service dollars when it comes to maintaining their aircraft. That is why they look to the center of the United States. They fly over deserts, across oceans and other maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) providers to get to Duncan Aviation.
The United States has been the leader in business aviation for decades, setting standards for aircraft maintenance, safety and training. More and more multi-national companies are recognizing the efficiencies gained from investing in business aircraft and are seeking the same safety and maintenance standards from their own countries like those established by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the United States.
At Duncan Aviation, we work closely with several global aviation agencies and currently hold foreign return-to-service authorizations from the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), encompassing 31 countries from the European community, as well as the individual countries of Bermuda, Brazil, Cayman Islands, China, Mexico and Venezuela.
The path to foreign authorization is lengthy, laden with a lot of paperwork and never the same.
“Every country has just enough unique requirements that each authorization process is different,” says Chris VanderWeide, Duncan Aviation’s Chief Inspector for Foreign Airworthiness. “Some countries are satisfied with our FAA Repair Station Authorization and will issue their authorization based on that. Others have significant differences with regards to repair station and quality manuals, safety procedures, training programs, among other things.” As a part of the authorization, most countries will conduct an on-site visit to confirm and verify all the documentation that has been received. No matter how easy or difficult the process, they all want to be reassured that Duncan Aviation can deliver safe maintenance services by highly skilled technicians with the most up-to-date data available.
Here’s how we achieve the level of quality our customers have come to expect.
Duncan Aviation invests annually in many forms of both technical and non-technical training. Training is accomplished at factory training facilities or in-house utilizing Duncan Aviation’s staff of professional technical trainers. All engine, airframe and avionics teams have factory-trained technicians performing or overseeing the work.
Duncan Aviation’s Quality Assurance system has been accepted by the FAA, EASA and an ever-growing list of countries. All Qualified Inspectors are highly experienced and receive current regulatory and Duncan Aviation quality system training. Inspectors completing return to service documentation for Duncan Aviation are certificated under the Federal Aviation Regulations. All Duncan Aviation Qualified Inspectors are well-versed in the foreign regulations represented in our hangars.
Tooling for even the most basic work on a business aircraft is very expensive and many aircraft models often require the use of special tooling during a maintenance event. Duncan Aviation has made significant investments into special tooling according to individual manufacturer service center agreements. This investment gives Duncan Aviation more control over expenses, tool use and availability. Tools required to be calibrated are done so in accordance with the Duncan Aviation Quality Control Manual.
Duncan Aviation has instituted an aircraft tool calibration process to monitor calibration results and adjust calibration intervals to ensure all measuring and test equipment remains in tolerance throughout its calibration cycle. Standards used to calibrate production tools are traceable to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). When equipment is approaching the end of its calibration cycle, we schedule recalibration. All tools requiring calibration are calibrated and issued a Calibration Certificate before they are able to be used by technicians.
Calibration services are available to all aircraft owners and operators with measuring and test equipment that requires periodic calibration.
With more than 370,000 line items, including more than $45 million in rotables, and a huge inventory of avionics, instruments, propellers, parts components and consumables of all kinds, Duncan Aviation has most parts available for any core aircraft serviced. A computer material management system handles all purchasing and replenishment requirements. The system supports multi-warehouse locations and queries the entire organization.
Duncan Aviation is a factoryauthorized service facility for 11 airframe and engine OEMs, and has more than 70 OEM authorizations for avionics, instruments, accessories and propeller units. We maintain an up-todate computer library of maintenance manuals easily accessed by the technicians on the hangar floor and at our benches.
Although Duncan Aviation is not authorized in all countries around the world, providing service where it is needed is very important to us. Frequently, we are called to provide aircraft inspections, maintenance and AOG services for operators from countries where we do not hold maintenance authorization. In these cases, a special dispensation is requested from that country’s aviation authority. Typically, this process takes several days.
Every week, Duncan Aviation technical representatives field multiple requests from customers around the world for aircraft services and information. We are currently in the certification process with India and South Africa and expect to have those authorizations by spring 2012. As business aviation continues to grow internationally, we will be looking to add more international authorizations.