Leaders in the business aircraft engine space repeated some themes of optimism that have been heard throughout CJI Miami this week, while others were nervous about celebrating too quickly.
“Supply chain is affecting a lot of things right now. Post-Covid, we’re seeing a lot of critical parts that aren’t available right now. We are seeing a little bit of freedom in 2024,” said Honeywell sales manager Zach Ungerleider. “Has it normalized? Not really just yet. But we’re hoping that things are getting a little better, in my opinion.”
Richard Berkemeier, senior appraiser at Pegasus Aircraft Appraisal Group, was cautious to join in on that thought. “If we take Trump at his word, maybe he ends the war in Ukraine and suddenly there’s an availability of a lot of engines that have to go into the shop,” he said. “I’m not as optimistic as Zach.”
“For the Rolls-Royce experience, it is normalized,” said Rolls-Royce v-p of customer service James Prater. “We have seen supply issues, but we’ve been able to mitigate them. We don’t have people waiting on these engines. In our market segment, we’re robust.”
“I’m more on the side of Richard,” added Pratt & Whiney Canada senior manager Sebastien Larue. “We have a large fleet and the turnaround time is still long. We kind of forgot what was normalcy five years ago. I think the new normalcy is not 2019 [or] 2018. We’re going to live in a market that’s complex and ambiguous and we have to find a new normal that we have to be comfortable with.”
Larue also noted the change in the industry post-Covid. “We realized there’s a lot of education that needs to be done. Covid was the perfect storm,” he said. “The paradigm has completely changed. We didn’t disclose any information, we were very prudent with what we had, and I think it’s time to be a little more open and talk about the value prop, talk about the rates,” he said.