Alex Tearle, president of Aero Precision Repair & Overhaul (A-Pro), returns to NBAA this year to share anecdotes about the Golden Age of the airline business and the formative years of corporate aviation as well as to showcase A-Pro’s landing gear, hydraulic and flight control system repair and overhaul capabilities.

A-Pro is a joint venture of Dassault Falcon and Messier Services and is sharing space at the Dassault booth (No. N2104). Celebrating more than 20 years in business, A-Pro employs 85 people at its 41,000-sq-ft Deerfield Beach, Fla. facility. It offers repair and overhaul capabilities for Falcon landing gear, wheel and tire refurbishment; brake overhaul for the Falcon 900 and 2000; and high-volume overhaul and repair for the Embraer 135/145 and Legacy, ATR 42/72, Piaggio Avanti P.180, Eurocopter Super Puma and SA360 Dauphin and Sikorsky’s S-92.

One of A-Pro’s core functions is to ensure support for operators of older Falcons. “Dassault has expressly requested that A-Pro redouble its continued support for operators of early Falcon 10s and 20s,” Tearle said. “Flat rates, competitive loaner/exchange programs and aggressive pricing are some tools we’re using to bring multi-generational operators back under the OEM support umbrella. The Falcon 50 is 32 years from launch, so it is refreshing to see that Dassault still considers support of all operators of significant importance.”

Tearle became involved in aviation through his father, Walter. “My father was on the team of engineers developing the Whittle jet engine with Frank Whittle. He later was plant manager at Joseph Lucas Company, which began by manufacturing bicycle lamps and moved on to ignitions, magnetos/generators and lighting systems for British automobiles before evolving into Lucas Aerospace,” he said. The elder Tearle worked for Frank Piasecki, developer of the tandem-rotor helicopter that became the Chinook, and later at Eastern Airlines, where he helped prepare Eastern’s repair shops to accept the airline’s first Airbus A300s, “delivered for $1 each,” according to Alex. He recalled that when the deferred purchase price came due, “that’s when Eastern’s problems really began.”

Tearle observed that while business during the downturn isn’t exactly booming, “It’s much better than it was after 9/11. We have overhauled over 35,000 landing gears and more than 50,000 hydraulic components.”