Reflecting a 20-percent growth of the Falcon fleet in the last five years, Dassault (Booth No. 1182) has embarked upon a multiyear plan to improve its customer support services. The “added value and pricing guarantee” is its latest initiative

If, after a review, Dassault Falcon agrees that the customer could find an equivalent component with the same added value as a genuine Dassault replacement part, Dassault Falcon will adjust the price to match that of  the other parts supplier anytime before installation. The price adjustment would be in effect for all sales of that part. If Dassault can’t show a better value, the customer can return the part for full credit without the applicable restocking fee.

“In essence, Dassault will continue to improve its spare parts support by having our customers recognize the value of using genuine Dassault replacement parts which will deliver aircraft reliability equal to, or better than, when the aircraft was new,” said Frank Youngkin, vice president of worldwide spares for Dassault Falcon.

“We have 120,000 part numbers in our spares inventory. It’s a complex task to ensure all spares are competitively priced. Feedback from our operators is integral to fairly evaluating parts pricing,” he said.

Dassault Falcon’s spares availability has maintained an impressive rate of 98 percent for the past several years and has become the benchmark of the industry. This has been achieved by improving long-term planning, add- ing inventory, reviewing specific service failures and working more closely with major parts suppliers.

“We’ve substantially increased our spares inventory levels in the past several years by adding new warehouse locations and increasing inventory. We’ve also reduced prices on a wide range of products by a significant amount,” said Youngkin. “Availability is up, and prices are down, by an average 22 percent, on parts for both out-of-production aircraft as well as current-production models.”

Over the past five years, Dassault has also increased by 33 percent the total number of personnel in the field dedicated to the customer directly (field service reps and customer service managers). So far this year, Dassault has added three field service representatives who will be based in Brazil, Portugal and China.

Dassault will return to Boca Raton, Florida, for its sixth worldwide M&O seminar beginning on May 30.    – D.D.