Hawker Pacific Aerospace could be one of the best kept secrets in the San Fernando Valley aerospace industry. The Sun Valley company is owned by a subsidiary of German air carrier Deutsche Lufthansa AG. Yet it has long kept a low profile despite being a leading provider of maintenance for landing gears on commercial jets. Lately, though, the company has been drawing more attention as it invests $1.2 million to expand into the business of servicing reverse thrusters – the equipment that slow a jet aircraft down immediately after landing. “This will give Hawker an additional opportunity for growth,” said Chief Executive Michael Kirstein. “Especially for all customers located on the West Coast we will be able to offer a very competitive thrust reverse overhaul service.” The thruster work came to Hawker Pacific when its parent, Lufthansa Technik, received a contract with a major U.S. air carrier. The airline wanted repair and overhaul work done in the U.S. instead of sending the work to the Lufthansa Technik facility in Hamburg, Germany, said Brian Carr, vice president of landing gear operations. Hawker Pacific will receive up to eight thrusters a month to overhaul, or roughly 100 in the first year, Carr said. Airlines typically send the thrusters to be repaired and overhauled after every 4,000 takeoffs and landings. Hawker Pacific employs about 340 workers operating out of eight buildings on 10 acres on Sherman Way near Vineland Avenue. The new work has prompted the company to hire six more employees. As one of the few bright spots in a declining Southern California aerospace industry it’s also prompted state officials to pay closer attention to the firm, which may need to expand as its new work takes off. Peter Ruiz, regional manager for the San Fernando Valley region at Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. has been introducing executives at Hawker Pacific to officials at all levels of government. There have been meetings with L.A. City Councilman Paul Krekorian and state Sen. Alex Padilla, both of whom represent Sun Valley, and the staff of GoBiz, the economic development program run out of the office of Gov. Jerry Brown. “Since we are losing aerospace and aerospace suppliers, this is the kind of company we want to keep growing here,” Ruiz said. High-tech repairs Hawker Pacific was founded in 1958 as Stellar Hydraulics, a family-owned manufacturer for the aviation industry. Over the years, the company changed hands and switched its business focus to a landing gear repair station. In the late 1980s, the company was purchased by Hawker Siddeley, a British company, and a decade later changed its name to Hawker Pacific Aerospace following a management buyout. Lufthansa Technick took a minority stake in the company in 2000 and became the full owner in 2002. Lufthansa Technik is one of the world’s largest independent maintenance providers not owned by an aircraft manufacturer, said Jonathan Berger, a vice president with ICF International Inc., an aviation and technology consultancy based in Fairfax, Va. The company is known for making shrewd and prudent business decision, and the new work plays to its strengths. “(Thrust reversers) gets into high-tech composite repairs. It is labor intensive and is not just something you can send to unskilled labor,” Berger said. For its landing gear work, Hawker Pacific repairs and overhauls equipment used on large commercial jets made by Chicago-based Boeing Co. and Airbus SAS of Toulouse, France, and regional jets produced by Embraer S.A., of Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil. The gear assemblies are overhauled on a rotation of every 10 years to 12 years. The landing gears are shipped to the east San Fernando Valley by truck where they are inspected. After the paint is stripped and the gears tested for cracks, they are disassembled into individual parts and inspected again. If needed, the parts are machined and plated, reassembled and then undergo another round of testing on the electronics, hydraulics, and steering. This year, the company anticipates doing work on about 400 landing gear assemblies. “That is a generous number, and might be the most ever,” said Chief Financial Officer Troy Trower. The thruster comprises either blades or buckets that push the airplane’s thrust forward after landing, creating a loud whooshing noise. In the process, they undergo a lot of abuse and heat. The process for servicing them is similar to landing gears, requiring inspection, cleaning and repair, but it involves less machining and plating and more expertise in sheet metal and composite materials, said Carr. Hawker Pacific’s cost for the landing gear work can vary depending on the type of assembly, the type of aircraft, and how the seats are arranged on the aircraft, Trower said. Airline growth The high growth in the aftermarket for aircraft parts repair and maintenance is directly tied in with record numbers of orders at Boeing, Airbus, Embraer and Montreal-based Bombardier Inc. At last month’s Paris Air Show, for example, Boeing and Airbus walked off with a combined $129 billion in orders for more than 800 commercial aircraft. All those aircraft represent potential work for Hawker Pacific in years to come. But tough competition in the commercial aviation aftermarket may become even tougher. Locally, Hawker Pacific finds itself going after work also sought by Sunvair, a repair station founded in the San Fernando Valley now located in Valencia. Other competitors for landing gear contracts are AAR Corp. of Wood Dale, Ill., the aerospace systems division of United Technologies of Hartford, Conn.; and Messier-Bugatti-Dowty, a division of French aerospace, rocket engine and security conglomerate Safran. What’s more, aircraft manufacturers are starting to take work away from these independents. They sell the planes and lock the buyer into lengthy agreements for maintenance, repairs and spare parts, said Berger of ICF. “They have a competitive advantage the independent (repair stations) do not have,” said Berger. Hawker Pacific’s strategy is to fight back with quick turnaround times. For narrow-body planes, the turnaround time is 30 days to 35 days while for wide-body planes it is 45 days to 55 days. “Our vision is to reduce the time year by year through our lean initiative even further,” Kirstein said.