On the Record with
PIERRE BEAUDOIN, PRESIDENT, BOMBARDIER BUSINESS AIRCRAFT

Bombardier Streamlining Service, Image

Bombardier Business Aircraft is looking to streamline its service and support functions, and has resolved to remind customers constantly that Bombardier aircraft are built by Bombardier.

Those are the marching orders from 39-year-old Pierre Beaudoin, who stepped into his new division president job early this year. Beaudoin took over the business aircraft unit of Bombardier Aerospace after running the corporation's Recreational Products Group.

He's the son of Bombardier Corp chairman Laurent Beaudoin and the grandson of company founder Joseph-Armand Bombardier. The family holds 61% of the corporation's voting shares.

Bombardier is doing very well. The Canadian company has emerged as the world's third largest airframer behind Airbus and Boeing, claims clear leadership in regional aircraft, and through the first half of this year has enjoyed a significant increase in aircraft deliveries.

"We want to present a clear leadership message with an emphasis on getting close to our customers," Beaudoin says. Bombardier execs from Beaudoin on down like to boast that they work at a company that's developed 11 new aircraft in as many years. Bombardier business aircraft deliveries have risen from 18 in 1986, Beaudoin says, to more than 200 last year.

In a year of increasing concern over general economic prospects, Bombardier now assiduously refers to Learjet as Bombardier Learjet and to the Flexjet fractional ownership program as Bombardier Flexjet. The company's also instituted the slogan, "Bombardier, ideas that fly," which appears virtually everywhere now.

And then there are those new airplanes. Bombardier's playing it close to the vest, as usual, but is said by industry sources to be working on an adjunct to the Learjet line and on a new variant of the flagship Global Express, with the latter countering such new and improved Gulfstream offerings as the GV-SP.

"There are still a few niches to fill," Beaudoin told Show News, indicating that further new aircraft products are indeed in the pipeline.

Beyond the new Continental and the others, yet undisclosed? "We became a market leader by making sure we filled every niche," says Bombardier scion Beaudoin. During his stint at Recreational Products, which makes popular Ski-Doo and Sea-Doo snowmobiles and jet skis, the unit acquired the well known Evinrude and Johnston outboard motor names.

Be Bombardier's new aircraft as they may, the company is busily trumpeting the first flight, on August 14, of the Continental, an eight-passenger, $14.7 million super-midsize, of which 115 have been sold. Bombardier's targeting late-2002 certification and a mid-2003 service debut.

Bombardier is focusing on better serving the many customers it already has, too. "We're going to put a lot of emphasis on the way we support the customer," Beaudoin repeats. "We had overcomplicated the way we've given service." A reorganization was effected over the past summer, with separate management teams for customer support and the various service centers now consolidated into one. This keeps one Bombardier unit from transferring parts to another before they reach the user.

Elsewhere under Beaudoin this year, Bombardier has named ExecuJet Australia to provide complete maintenance for the Learjet line, and sales support for Bombardier's other aircraft out of Kingsford-Smith Airport, Sydney. Also in league with ExecuJet, Bombardier has established a service center in Dubai for Challenger and Global Express aircraft. A West Coast U.S. service center is in the works too.

For Global Express buyers, Bombardier has instituted a single point of contract policy. Now, those who buy the premium jet will have just one Bombardier person to call for all of the questions that arise between purchase of an aircraft and its delivery. "One voice for the customer," says Beaudoin.

-Rich Piellisch