It’s been a busy, exciting time of change for Twin Commander Aircraft, and for me.
I came aboard as President of Twin Commander earlier this year after more than 20 years leading complex businesses in aerospace, defense, service, and industrial markets. I’ve been around aviation most of my life, from watching crop dusters as a kid to professional involvement with jets and black programs. To me, the Twin Commander is awesome. It is a majestic aircraft, simply mesmerizing. The prospect of building on a quarter-century tradition of keeping this beautiful aircraft at the head of the class in terms of performance, all-around utility, reliability, and hands-on flying qualities is what attracted me to the company.
We have all the basic pieces in place to support the fleet, beginning with a solid worldwide network of authorized service centers. Each one has trained and experienced Twin Commander technicians on the floor, factory supplied parts on hand, specialty tools at the ready and dedicated, knowledgeable personnel to work with owners and operators. Eagle Creek Aviation Services, which is profiled in this issue, is a prime example of the experience and depth of our service center partners, and “From the Shop Floor” details the extent of our technician training program.
We have decades of Twin Commander technical experience and advice available to service centers and owners here at Twin Commander Aircraft, as is evident in Geoffrey Pence’s “Commanding Presence.”
We have excellent platforms to communicate with owners, operators, prospects and service centers—the Twin Commander website; product notifications such as the most recent one on kits to improve the performance of your pressurization system; the Twin Commander eNewsletter emailed monthly to subscribers; and the quarterly Flight Levels that you’re reading now.
And now I am extremely pleased to report that Twin Commander Aircraft has new resources and new energy to power our mission of providing owners, operators, and service centers with the highest quality support. As reported in another article in this issue, BBA Aviation is acquiring Twin Commander’s parent company, Firstmark Corporation. Twin Commander Aircraft will become part of Ontic, BBA’s aftermarket services division, which is the leading global provider of OEM-pedigree parts and MRO services for legacy aerospace platforms.
Ontic and Twin Commander are a hand-in-glove fit. Ontic says its “entire business and infrastructure is uniquely optimized to support mature products for as long as our customers need them.” Ontic specializes in licensing intellectual property rights from aerospace manufacturers including GE Aviation, Honeywell, Safran, Pratt & Whitney, Curtiss-Wright, United Technologies and other major companies and then providing customers—Bombardier, Gulfstream, Raytheon, Cessna and major airlines—with parts and technical support.
Twin Commander Aircraft and the other Firstmark companies involved in the acquisition represent a transition from Ontic’s strategy of licensing to owning legacy manufacturing. It also will be the first East Coast-based companies in their portfolio, which has been a goal.
This is a very good time for Twin Commander Aircraft. BBA and Ontic are major companies with global reach and resources. They bring passion, commitment, and modernization. This means that, going forward, Twin Commander Aircraft will have the long-term backing and resources we need to do an even better, more effective job of supporting the fleet and attracting new customers.
The acquisition agreement was just recently signed, and we’re looking at a 60-to-90-day process of obtaining all the required agency and regulatory approvals. But here at Twin Commander we are not pausing for the transition to take place. We are working on new upgrade kits and technical support. I will be hitting the road soon to visit service centers and customers. And, we are planning to hold a Twin Commander University sometime in 2019—stay tuned for details.
In the meantime, please join me in celebrating this very exciting news, and in welcoming Ontic and BBA Aviation to our family.
