Because many international borders remained closed for much of 2020 due to Covid-19, intercontinental aircraft activity diminished substantially from April through the end of the year, and even short-range flights within Europe were nearly impossible for many months.
In the U.S., however, business aircraft travel recovered quickly. After declining sharply from mid-March through mid-June 2020, flight activity reached 85 to 90 percent of its 2019 levels by July, according to FlightAware, and even grew in the last half of 2020 as travelers worried about safety increasingly turned to private aviation. FlightAware statistics show that business aviation operations met 2019 levels by December 2020 and surged past those levels by April 2021.
ARGUS International’s 2021 Mid-Year Business Aviation Review reports that Part 135 charter activity setting several flight activity records in the first half of 2021, with June activity up 12.1 percent compared with the same month in 2019. Even Part 91 corporate aviation activity—which had a more sluggish return than charter due to companies replacing in-person meetings with videoconferencing—returned to 85 percent of 2019 levels in the first half of 2021.
Business aviation is clearly bouncing back, and Honeywell remains ready to support customers and aircraft manufacturers as the demand for lift rises.
Increasing Safety for Passengers and Crew
As a multinational company with expertise across many industries, Honeywell has developed technological innovations in response to the Covid-19 pandemic to keep business aircraft flying. These range from personal protection equipment (PPE) to ultraviolet aircraft sterilization tools and air-quality enhancements.
For crew who must wear masks in many situations inside and outside the U.S., Honeywell has developed a comfortable knit dual-layer face cover with a removable insert that blocks 97 percent of three-micron-sized particles and 0.1-micron-sized aerosolized particles. In addition, Honeywell offers two N95 disposable respirators.
In mid-2020, the company introduced an ultraviolet cleaning system for use in large aircraft. Aimed at the airline market and suitable for airplanes ranging from Boeing 747s to Bombardier CRJs, the Honeywell UV Cabin System can treat a cabin in less than 10 minutes. For smaller business jets and turboprops, the Honeywell UV Treatment Wand offers a versatile option that can reach tighter spaces. Both systems use high-intensity 254-nanometer UVC light that significantly reduces bacteria and viruses on targeted surfaces in less time than 222-nanometer excimer systems.
Honeywell’s Combined Hydrocarbon Ozone Catalyst (CHOC4) converter, available for Airbus A320, A330, and A340 aircraft, significantly reduces odors from bleed air, ensuring cleaner cabin airflow for safer, more reliable operations. The improved air quality from the reduction of volatile organic compounds can also minimize adverse health effects such as headaches, nausea, and nose/throat irritation.
Working Through Supply-chain Challenges
As flight schedules eased in mid-2020, many bizav operators took the opportunity to conduct scheduled maintenance and upgrade avionics. At the same time, government-mandated lockdowns, limited work hours, and labor shortages around the globe meant interruptions in the supply chains for everything from raw materials to intricately machined parts. Honeywell rose to the challenge by working with customers and suppliers and opening new supply chains where needed.
“Supply-chain issues are commonplace for most parts manufacturers; they’re something we continuously monitor and proactively manage,” said Bill Hurst, Honeywell v-p of business aviation, Americas aftermarket. “Covid introduced a few more challenges as there just weren’t enough people to produce or deliver the parts, whether due to local laws, regulations, or requirements related to Covid. But we’re very adaptable and we work through those types of issues to make parts and components available to customers.”
Part of Honeywell’s ongoing customer-support strategy is ensuring that all supply chains have multiple vendors or sources of material. Maintaining good relations with suppliers allows the company to be forewarned and act when there may be a supply issue.
“We continue to work on finding multiple sources for critical parts and manufacturing,” said Hurst. “We’ve also augmented our supply and procurement teams to be more mobile. Whenever a supplier has late or recurrent delivery issues, we assign recovery teams to assist the supplier—often going physically onsite—in returning to on-time delivery performance.”
Another part of Honeywell’s robust customer-support strategy is to ensure that the company has an accurate demand forecast.
“We’re talking to every customer,” Hurst said. “Using our licensed networks, we go to great lengths to talk to every operator in our region—and the Aircraft OEMs—to get the most insight into demand profiles. We’ve built a strong demand profile for avionics and mechanical usage, and we’re building those predictions for five years out to ensure our supply chains can meet increased demand as maintenance events increase.”
Reducing Scheduled Maintenance and Increasing Time on Wing
Another way Honeywell is helping the industry recover from Covid is by keeping airplanes flying once they do return to active status. As an engine supplier, Honeywell has continuously sought ways to increase the time between maintenance intervals, reduce scheduled maintenance, and enhance the repair capabilities of customer service centers in the field.
For example, in 2019 Honeywell increased the turbine section borescope inspection requirement on the HTF7000 engine series from 4,000 to 4,800 hours, and the compressor section inspection from 8,000 to 9,600 hours. While the 800-hour extension on the turbine may not sound like much, it allows for anywhere from two to four more years of flying, depending on the hours flown per year, before the aircraft must be parked for that extensive inspection.
“Over the last several years, we have been heavily focused on increasing the time on wing for all of our engine series,” said Hurst. “Back in 2018, we were able to increase a periodic inspection requirement on many of our TFE models from 2,500 to 3,000 hours, which could give an operator three more years of service without putting it down for maintenance. The feedback has been favorable from operators that they want more of it, so we’re continuing to look at ways we can increase that time on wing.”
While the majority of our auxiliary power units (APUs) are on-condition engines without prescribed maintenance intervals, Honeywell has also completed several programs to increase APU reliability to keep aircraft flying. One example is the carbon-seal upgrades on various models of Honeywell’s 36 series APUs. As the old seals were identified as a source of oil leaks, the first carbon-seal upgrade on the 36-150 model was approved in 2018, and Honeywell engineers continued to work on upgrading other models of this popular APU through 2020 and 2021.
“All of our new [36 series] APUs are delivered with the latest carbon seals, and we continue to upgrade the active flying fleet with the new seals,” said Hurst. “As we get greater adoption of those in-service aircraft, we’re seeing higher reliability for these APUs, which keeps our customers flying.”
Honeywell has recently helped field service technicians expand their capabilities by opening up more internal repair documents and granting authority to repair more parts. Authorized Honeywell service centers such as Standard Aero, Duncan Aviation, and Turbine Engine Specialists are embracing the ability to do more repairs in-house so they can improve turn times and reduce the number of engines that return to Honeywell’s Phoenix facility for repair.
Honeywell is also helping bizav operators navigate uncertain times with budget control by providing monthly maintenance programs that spread out the expense of high-cost maintenance events such as major inspections and replacement of timed-out components. Honeywell’s Maintenance Service Plan (MSP) provides financial predictability and maximizes aircraft dispatchability based on broad coverage of avionics and mechanical products. As one MSP can cover all Honeywell content on the aircraft—including engines, avionics, and APUs—the MSP can also provide for targeted obsolescence, budgeting for converting avionics from cathode-ray-tube (CRT) equipment to liquid crystal displays (LCD), for example.
Welcoming First-time Bizav Flyers
Thanks to a flood of first-time private aviation passengers, several aircraft charter companies saw tremendous growth during the last half of 2020 and first half of 2021. Several companies experienced more than 100 percent growth year over year, and charter giant NetJets even paused sales of its fractional shares in July 2021 and all jet cards in August 2021 as demand outpaced supply.
As more people take their first flights on private aircraft, Honeywell is trying to help its business aviation customers keep their passengers flying.
“The focus for the past year has been on adapting to the needs and mission profiles of those new customers and ensuring their first private aviation experience is positive,” said Hurst. “Whether it’s a charter flight, a CEO with a corporation, or a fractional fleet operator, we’re making sure their aircraft has the parts and the personnel have the experience needed to dispatch every flight on time. We want those first-time bizav passengers to become long-term users of business and private aviation.”
