Alexandre Rocha
São Paulo – Táxi Aéreo Marília (TAM), a company included in the same group as TAM Brazilian Airlines, wants to increase its participation in the small aircraft technical assistance area. For this purpose, the company inaugurated a new maintenance centre in Jundiaí airport, 63 kilometres away from the city of São Paulo, capital of the southeastern state by the same name. Investment in the construction of the complex, which covers a total area of 18,900 metres and has sufficient capacity to answer to 120 aircraft simultaneously, totalled an estimated US$ 8 million.
Baptized Commander Rolim Adolfo Amaro Aircraft Technology and Maintenance Centre, in memory of the company founder, this is the largest complex of the kind among Cessna Aircraft Company dealers in the world, at least up to December, when the North American group will inaugurate a new maintenance complex in Kansas, United States of America. TAM is an official Cessna representative in Brazil, both for aircraft sales and for technical service.
According to the president of the Brazilian company, Rui Thomaz de Aquino, there are currently around 2,700 Cessna aircraft of various kinds in Brazil, from single-engine aircraft to executive jets. At their current maintenance centre at Congonhas airport, in São Paulo, TAM does technical service on around 250 of these aeroplanes. The target is to service at least 1,000 aircraft within the next two or three years. "We want to reach higher levels of penetration on the market," stated Aquino.
The Brazilian company also does maintenance on twin engine King Air aircraft, produced by US company Rahyteon, and on Bell Helicopters.
The executive director of the Brazilian General Aviation Association (Abag), Adalberto Febeliano, believes that apart from the large installations and the "significant" investment, this TAM enterprise will be important to help develop Jundiaí airport as a new pole for general aviation services, replacing the highly congested Congonhas airport, in the heart of industrial São Paulo.
The lack of space in Congonhas, according to Aquino, was the main reason for construction of the new installations. In São Paulo, the TAM maintenance centre covered an area of just 4,200 square metres, making it impossible to provide services to new customers. The company is going to discontinue maintenance operations at the airport in central São Paulo, but is going to continue providing air taxi services and aircraft sale and purchase operations at the site.
The company intention is to focus on the domestic market, as Brazil is the second largest world market for executive aviation, losing only to the United States. But TAM does not discard the possibility of providing services to customers in neighbouring countries, like Argentina, Paraguay, and Chile. With regard to service costs, Aquino stated: "It may sound incredible, but sometimes labour is cheaper than car maintenance, when compared to garages specialized in imported cars."
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Nowadays TAM Táxi Aéreo has revenues of around US$ 33 million a year, being an estimated US$ 11 million due to the technical service area. Aquino believes that, with the new centre, revenues should rise to between 10% and 15% in 2005. The target is to double revenues in the sector within the next five years.
The new installations, which started operating on Monday (09), have 150 employees. Aquino stated, however, that the idea is to grow to between 500 and 600 employees within the next five years. If demand is as high as expected, the company plans to build a new 8,100 square metre hangar within then next two years.
Established in 1961, Táxi Aéreo Marília currently owns six executive jets, and another 12 Cessna Caravan turboprops, for charter flights. The company was the father company for TAM Brazilian Airlines, one of the largest airlines in Brazil, with a fleet of 70 aircraft, and flights to 39 destinations in the country and tree abroad (Miami, Paris, and Buenos Aires). On August 17, TAM Brazilian Airlines, in partnership with Lebanese Middle East Airlines, is going to inaugurate a flight between São Paulo and Beirut.
The general aviation sector includes all aircraft apart from those in commercial and military aviation. In the area, for example, are executive and agricultural aviation companies, air taxi, aero clubs, ultra-lights, and small private aircraft.
Within the sector, according to Adalberto Febeliano, the two most important areas are executive aviation, "due to its assets," with 1,400 aircraft in the country, and agricultural aviation, "for the value of services provided."
