On the Record with
PIERRE FABRE, PRESIDENT & CEO, CFM INTERNATIONAL

A Tough Act to Follow

Pierre Fabre, named today to succeed Gerard Laviec as president and CEO of CFM International as of August 30, is already preparing a gameplan for his three-year tour of duty in Cincinnati.

"It is always difficult to follow a successful period," Fabre says of Laviec's tenure, when CFM sales broke records almost every year and it was a poor year if orders fell below 1,000. "I would be very surprised if there isn't a downtown," he told Show News.

His strategy will take three directions.

First will be to deliver the engines already ordered, on time and up to performance, and then to support them in the field.

Second will be to continue to infuse and offer new technology to improve current engines, such as the CM56-3 core upgrade launched by Southwest Airlines that increases exhaust temperature margins by 15 degrees Centigrade and reduces specific fuel consumption by 1%.

Third will be to manage the technology acquired in the TECH56 program to define with the airlines and airframers what best fits their needs. Fabre does not believe TECH56 will result in a new engine in the foreseeable future, "but we must define the future, and perhaps prepare a new game," he says. "If you have a very good product-which we have-and leave it alone, someone will come along with something better. So we cannot rest on our laurels."

Fabre half jokingly refers to his appointment as "one with responsibility but no authority" when it comes to dealing with CFMI joint partners GE Aircraft Engines and Snecma of France. "The only power you have is your own, to convince or persuade," he says. He hopes to succeed as well as his predecessors, who have made CFMI the most successful transatlantic partnership in aerospace history.

His other talents are that he knows the engine, its technology and its economics from working in the CFM56 program at Snecma most of his career (including three years in Cincinnati as the Snecma technical representative to GE from 1981 to 1984), and he knows the airline customers after spending 18 months as executive VP of the Aircraft Braking Division of Messier-Bugatti, a subsidiary of Snecma Group.

By John Morris