Global Services won’t hurt airline tech ops, says Boeing official

Feb. 13, 2018, © Leeham Co.: A Boeing official today dismissed concerns that expanding Boeing Global Services, with additional controls on aftermarket support for commercial airplanes it builds, might negatively impact potential sales.

Several airlines, including Delta, Singapore, Lufthansa, Air France-KLM and some Chinese carriers, operate their own MRO facilities that not only maintain their own fleets, but offer services to other airlines.

Kevin Michaels, president of the consulting firm AeroDynamics, expressed concern that Boeing’s tighter control of aftermarket parts is already leading to customer satisfaction issues at some airlines. He also said Boeing might lose airplane sales to Airbus if it is unwilling to grant MRO rights to the maintenance facilities of those carriers that operate them.

Michaels made his remarks at the annual conference of the Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance.

Not a worry, says Boeing

Michaels’ concerns aren’t a worry, says Randy Tinseth, VP of marketing for Boeing.

In remarks on the sidelines of the PNAA conference, Tinseth says Boeing will cooperate with airlines.

“To me, our customers want products where airplane services make economic sense to them. We are only going to be successful if we offer it at the right price at the right time,” Tinseth says. “One of focuses is to leverage our engineering team, to leverage of logistics systems and now we are able to retool what we are doing to be more focused on what we are doing outside of the company.”

Tinseth dismissed concerns that Boeing might offend airlines with their own MRO services, noting Boeing has been in the services business for decades. “We just have a new business [Boeing Global Services]. We partner with some of our customers and we compete with some of our customers. We are looking to make sure we provide a better value proposition to our customers on that broad base.”

3 Comments on “Global Services won’t hurt airline tech ops, says Boeing official

  1. OV-99 – you are not alone with your feeling – reading next post….

    What is it ?
    Condensed and pure, distilled GREED – nothing else.

  2. He doesnt really deny that Boeing wants some of the cream and as a master salesman just touts his company’s offerings with a hint of ‘leverage’ to come from their design and logistics knowledge.

  3. And he say:
    “we compete with some of our customers”

    Do you want to have a vendor who decides to compete with you as a customer ?

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