The continuous attention to customers’ needs has always been one of Leonardo's priorities. We keep a life-long commitment to our customers, with constant product support, including service and upgrading assistance and dedicated training programmes.
AW Malaysia’s Customer Support and Training team is certainly a success story in this regard. The team, from the dedicated hub located at Subang Airport, provides a long list of services to Leonardo Helicopters’ customers into the region with a wide range of proposals and solutions tailored to the needs and requirements of operators and customers in the area.
(AWMalaysia hub at Subang Airport)
AW Malaysia: tailor-made services and more flexibility for our customers
AW Malaysia (AWM) is consolidating its role of as a “one-stop-shop”, able to meet needs and requirements of operators and customers in the area, also through a careful selection of vendors and partners, aimed at constantly increasing the R&O capabilities for components in East Asia.
In order to guarantee efficiency in maintenance of the local fleets, Leonardo Helicopters has developed a strategic partnership with ST Aerospace Systems Pte Ltd and Composite Technology International Pte Ltd, two of our major repair centres located in Singapore. Both companies provide high quality advanced R&O capabilities on main dynamic components such as main rotor hubs and blades. Recently, ST Aerospace successfully completed a midlife inspection on a main gear box, providing outstanding performances in terms of turnaround time and allowing important savings in terms of shipment cost.
The Customer Support range of solutions made available in the area from our main hub located in Malaysia, include the aircraft maintenance (Line & Base) to specific customisations, on-site troubleshooting and repair, full fleet management with continuous airworthiness management (technical and logistic assistance) services and complete turnkey solutions.
Following the fast growth of the fleet within the region, AWM in recent years has also played a major role in the delivery of aircraft providing full support for the re-assemblies, assisting the completion and finally ferry flying the helicopters to their final destinations.
Training Academy Malaysia - Innovative Hub to Level Up Customer Training
At the AWM hub, Leonardo is also present with the Training Academy, which is the point of reference for training activities in East Asia, especially for the AW139 fleet.
Established in 2012, the Training Academy is currently equipped with a FFS Level D, a Maintenance Trainer Simulator and a Virtual Interactive Procedural Trainer (VIPT) for the AW139.
It relies on a team of about 15 people, including 5 flight instructors and 4 ground instructors. The simulator services are provided by with our partner PWN Excellence (Authorised Synthetic Training Centre since 2013), which has been the first training hub in the Asia region offering the AW139 Level D Full Flight Simulator. The simulator is certified by the Department of Civil Aviation of Malaysia (DCAM) and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). The Training Academy with PWNE adopts international standard procedures to ensure that the training provided meets the actual operational effectiveness, versatility and performance of being in a real helicopter.
We are planning to expand the training capabilities in Malaysia in the next couple of years. A second AW139 FFS Level D will be available for pilots within 2019 and the AW189 FFS Level D entry into service will be accomplished in 2020.
While training courses portfolio for pilots and engineers is getting wider, some Theoretical Instructions courses can now be provided also at Customers base in order to ensure cost effective as well as flexible and fully tailored solutions to our customers’ needs, furthermore favoring our customers with savings on time and costs.
Among the successful examples of the programmes we are offering, we can count the training program for the Royal Malaysian Police, in which 12 pilots and 4 technicians are involved, and that will be followed by a new training program based on intensive training courses.
Also the successful completion of the first worldwide AW189 Maintenance Test Pilot course with Southern Vietnam Helicopters will open the way to a further training contract, that will see a larger number of pilots and engineers to train and will allow to strengthen the cooperation with the customer, also in view of future training projects with other operators in the area.
(AW189)