On-location service limits service center trips
For South Carolina entrepreneur Marc Dulude, any lost time can lead to missed opportunities, lost deals and lost revenue. Flying his Citation® M2® to meetings across the United States and Canada gives him hours each week commercial airlines would take with security checks and airport layovers. He has also found another way to add efficiency into his schedule—Textron Aviation’s Mobile Service Units.
Textron Aviation Mobile Service Units service Citation, Hawker and King Air models.
He first took advantage of the Mobile Service Unit truck stationed in Milwaukee while flying his previous aircraft, a Citation Mustang®, from Boston to Chicago. In flight, his aircraft alerted him to a pitot heat error. While he was able to continue on to his destination, he was not able to depart when he landed.
Marc Dulude is executive director of CJP, an association for Citation jet owners and pilots. He holds a single-pilot type rating as well as commercial pilot certificates for single and multi-engine aircraft.
“I called Team Mustang. They get on the phone with the Textron Aviation Milwaukee service center and dispatched a mobile service unit to Chicago,” Dulude explained. “I go off to my meetings, they take off the defective pitot, find the problem and replace it. They used an epoxy that had to cure, so they pulled the Mustang into a hangar to dry. They did all the checks, I show up and fly home.”
“With anybody else,” he said. “I’d be done. There’s no way anyone else would have dispatched my aircraft so quickly.”
The ease of having technicians who come to the aircraft for scheduled and unscheduled maintenance is one of the reasons Dulude chose to purchase another Citation aircraft, the M2, when he was ready to transition to something larger.
Not long after taking delivery, he experienced firsthand the proactive benefits of the MSU fleet when he received a call from his service rep. His aircraft’s windshield needed to be repaired before the aircraft could fly into known icing.
“Here’s an aircraft company that reached out to me proactively to ask ‘What can we do for you?’ To come out and fix it without me interfacing much is pretty impressive.”
Marc Dulude, Citation M2 pilot and Mobile Service Unit customer
“It’s four in the afternoon,” Dulude said. “They had the parts at the Greensboro service center. They said they’d dispatch a mobile service unit and showed up at the plane at 9 a.m. the next day. They did the work, left the documentation – I didn’t even see them.”
“That commitment sets Textron Aviation Service apart from any others I’ve dealt with before,” said Dulude.
Customers can schedule an MSU by calling 1.877.50.MSU4U (1.877.506.7848).