SAEI Finds a Perfect Partner to Expand MRO Reach to Helicopters
An MOU signed at Heli-Expo Atlanta this week ought to play a vital position in supporting infrastructure initiatives to meet the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030.
Saudia Aerospace Engineering Industries (SAEI) is now a certified service middle of Leonardo Helicopters after SAEI’s CEO, Capt. Fahd Hamzh Cynndy signed an settlement on March 8 with that Italian producer of rotary-wing plane.
Countersigning was Leonardo Helicopters Managing Director Gian Piero Cutillo, who hosted Captain Cynndy at his firm’s exhibit through the world’s premier helicopter commerce present, Heli-Expo, within the U.S. metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia.
“We share similar DNAs when it comes to ethics, integrity, standards, and a commitment to safety in aviation,” Captain Cynndy mentioned after the signing, including that he and Mr. Cutillo rapidly had discovered “very common ground” after they started work towards the settlement in November 2021.
“We share the same integrity regarding the safety commitment and the commitment to technology and digitalization.”
Captain Cynndy
For his half, Cutillo mentioned Saudia Aerospace Engineering Industries (SAEI) was your best option of a service associate for his firm. “We believe that SAEI is the right company,” he mentioned, “and a competitive advantage for Leonardo.”
SAEI’s service middle work will start in just a few weeks when it inducts a Kingdom-based Leonardo AW139 for scheduled inspections and associated work into its state-of-the-art upkeep, restore, and overhaul (MRO) facility at King Abdul-Aziz Airport in Jeddah.
The 15-seat, twin-engine AW139 is among the many world’s best-selling helicopters, with almost 1,300 being flown right now by greater than 290 operators in over 80 nations in missions starting from company, VIP transport to emergency medical companies and search and rescue (SAR).
The Helicopter Company (THC), arrange in 2018 below the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), has been constructing its fleet of AW139s and different helicopters for a number of years.
In the final six months of 2022, the newly launched Leonardo rotorcraft saved 570 lives in Search and Rescue missions in Saudi Arabia.
SAEI’s growth into helicopter MRO companies will likely be a key enabler in reaching the targets of the Kingdom’s 2030 financial and societal transformation technique, Captain Cynndy mentioned. “Vision 2030 has a lot of ambitions hinging on the success of the civil aviation sector.”
Launched in 2016, Vision 2030 goals to scale back the Kingdom’s dependence on oil, diversify its financial system and develop its schooling system, well being care, infrastructure, recreation alternatives, and tourism trade.
“We intend to provide better opportunities for partnerships with the private sector through the three pillars” of the technique, His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz has mentioned. Those pillars are the Kingdom’s place “as the heart of the Arab and Islamic worlds, our leading investment capabilities, and our strategic geographical position.”
His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz
Building higher roads, rail strains, energy and pipelines, and different infrastructure are sometimes initiatives during which helicopters play very important roles, as is the growth of gold, phosphate, uranium, and different natural-resource mining envisioned in Vision 2030.
Helicopters additionally play a key position in growing new vacationer locations, and luxurious resorts, enabling transporting friends – one other component of the Kingdom’s imaginative and prescient.
Saudi Arabia’s nationwide aviation coverage fulfills Vision 2030 calls, partly for “enabling the national tourism strategy and strengthening the local aviation sector.”
The Kingdom’s Ministry of Transport and Logistics Service (which incorporates the nation’s General Authority for Civil Aviation) goals to assist Vision 2030 by growing transport that can make Saudi Arabia “a logistics center linking the three continents” and selling “sustainable economic development and competitiveness.” It goals to try this partly by serving to make the
Kingdom’s aviation sector is “one of the most important sectors contributing to the domestic product,” reaching “the highest levels of safety worldwide” and inspiring “national companies to expand regionally and internationally.”
Captain Cynndy famous that Vision 2030 and the nationwide aviation coverage “have particular metrics that we have to execute on. Those metrics have been realized in the form of a helicopter segment” that’s now growing its civil facet.
“Four years ago, almost none of it existed,” he mentioned. “Now, we’re talking 40-plus helicopters, soon to be in the 80s and maybe 100 or so. This is just the beginning.”
Saudia Aerospace Engineering Industries (SAEI) is the main aviation technical options supplier within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Middle East, and North African areas, backed by over 60 years of expertise and greater than 4,200 extremely certified and educated skilled employees.
It holds approvals from the Kingdom’s General Authority for Civil Aviation (GACA), the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, European Union Aviation Safety Agency, and a number of other different regional and worldwide authorities.
It gives in depth built-in MRO companies to civil and navy plane fixed-wing airplane house owners and operators regionally and overseas.
Its companies embody plane, engine, part upkeep, engineering, line upkeep, manufacturing, provide chain, and logistics.
“Making the jump over to rotary-wing aircraft and trying to onboard that critical knowledge for helicopters, in theory, looks easy,” Captain Cynndy mentioned. “But in practice, it takes commitment and a rigorous process.”
He added that Leonardo “has always been committed to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, not just in delivering state-of-the-art machines but in growing the ecosystem as a whole and making sure the infrastructure is there to sustain growth going forward for the kingdom, within the kingdom and possibly the region.”
Like its predecessor firms, Agusta in Italy and Westland within the United Kingdom, the producer constructed airplanes within the twentieth century first many years and began making helicopters within the Nineteen Fifties. Leonardo introduced that company data and the technical experience, due diligence, and finest practices to assist SAEI progress by means of the tiers of growing helicopter MRO experience.
“This is a generational excellence,” Captain Cynndy mentioned. “Bringing that to the kingdom sustainably and permanently would only make our vision closer to meeting its strategic targets.”
“We needed to demonstrate what we are capable of doing to achieve Leonardo’s trust that we could maintain Leonardo’s helicopters as if they were maintained in Italy,” he mentioned. “That took a year, but this is just the journey’s beginning.”
Cutillo praised the foundations of management and experience from which SAEI began that journey.
“To have a center of excellence in maintenance is not something you can create overnight,” he mentioned. “You’ve got to have something from which you can start,” like SAEI’s six-plus many years of fixed-wing MRO expertise.
To construct a brand new native MRO functionality with actual value-added exercise, “you’ve got to have a reliable party from a competence point of view. We believe that the experience that SAEI has can facilitate this partnership.”
Captain Cynndy mentioned the partnership will provide Leonardo helicopter operators a turnkey resolution, “and that solution also happens to mesh perfectly with the Vision 2030 and the Kingdom’s national aviation strategy.”
Cutillo added that additionally they profit from placing Leonardo and SAEI near their prospects. “Being close to the customer is key to having success and understanding what customers need to have their aircraft available and ready to fly. At the end of the story, they have got to fly.”
