Following up on its appointment as a Pratt & Whitney
designated overhaul facility for the P&WC PW 300- and PW 500-series engines
in 2004, Dallas Airmotive this year comes to the NBAA Convention as the owner
of a new 13,000-square-foot repair and overhaul center and engine test facility
for the engines at its Dallas location.
The company also comes to NBAA with a new leader. Hugh E.
McElroy was named president and CEO in September, replacing James Donlan, who
left the company in June after four years at the helm. Donlan, who had
previously worked for Honeywell and was well known in the engine business,
passed away unexpectedly this summer. McElroy previously worked for Dallas
Airmotive at its Millville, N.J., facility, most recently as vp and general
manager at the location. Based in Grapevine, Texas, Dallas Airmotive provides
engine maintenance services, new parts distribution and accessory maintenance
repair services. Engine services include overhaul and repair, parts
restoration, performance testing, failure analysis and STC modifications. The
company in 2003 bought Premier Turbines, a Neosho, Mo.-based engine overhaul
facility with core zone inspection capabilities for the TFE731 turbine engine.
The new PW300/500 MRO facility has eight engine bays and was
designed for optimized lean manufacturing work flow. Service capabilities
include overhaul, repair, hot section and rework with precision calibrated
equipment that includes a Precitech rotor stacking machine, a Faro coordinated
measuring machine, a Schenck mass moment balancing machine and a Schenck
vertical balancing machine.
PW300 series engines power the Learjet 60, Hawker 1000,
Hawker Horizon, Gulfstream 200, Cessna Citation Sovereign and Falcon 2000EX.
The PW500 is used on the Cessna Citation Bravo, Cessna Citation Encore and
Cessna Citation Excel.
Adjoining the repair and overhaul facility is a new engine
test cell that Dallas Airmotive uses to verify engine performance off-wing
after a rework. The new facility is designed to be quiet, meeting local noise
ordinances and producing less than 65 dB of noise measured at the property
boundary.
The new test cell also allows for engine pre-test
preparation to take place outside of the test cell, minimizing downtime for
actual test runs. Before entering the test cell, technicians attach fuel lines,
oil lines and data sensors between the engine and a strong back, or support
harness. With the pre-work completed offline, test runs can start in as little
as 30 minutes after the engine arrives at the test cell.
DAI has also launched a new regional turbine center in
Millville to provide maintenance, repair and hot section inspection services
for PT6A and JT15D engines and to support the company's Millville hangar
operations that perform engine changes, flight line services, vibration surveys
and AOG support for Rolls-Royce Spey, Tay, RR250, Honeywell TFE731 and
36-series APUs, as well as the PT6A and JT15D. Millville is one of DAI's eight
regional turbine centers around the country.
