World’s leading independent aerospace component maintenance, repair, and overhaul service provider TurbineAero, is focused on APUs and related products. In the United States, Aviation accounts for over 5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product and over 12 million jobs. TurbineAero, formerly known as Triumph Air Repair, is the second largest privately funded aviation company in the state of Arizona, and the largest Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul (MRO) Services Company in the world.
With over 35 years of experience in the industry, TurbineAero has advanced a cause that plays a significant role in the country’s economy, with an industry that employs millions of workers and enables countless airlines to fly each day. TurbineAero is an organization that drives the US and global economy, while at the same time directly contributes to the safety of the country in a manner that creates a platform for the country’s finest to continue to serve that cause and work their craft throughout their careers.
Rob Higby’s Passion for Aviation Taking TurbineAero to the New Heights
Rob Higby, CEO of TurbineAero, Inc., is a graduate from Duke University. Rob spent five years in the investment banking and private equity industry before moving to Boston, MA to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received his Master’s in Business Administration in 2003.
As the CEO of TurbineAero, Rob’s excitement for aviation, dedication to execution, and drive to succeed has helped TurbineAero to exceed expectations. Under Rob’s leadership, TurbineAero was awarded APU MRO Top Shop Award in April 2017 from The145.com. Rob’s immense focus has successfully transformed TurbineAero’s commercial efforts by focusing TurbineAero to be the most comprehensive, flexible, and customer-focused APU MRO Services Company in the world. With Rob as the CEO, TurbineAero has booked close to $100 million in long-term contracts in less than eight months. Rob’s vision for TurbineAero has enabled him to quickly attract and hire some of the top management talent in commercial aviation today.
Rob has successfully integrated the former Triumph team with new TurbineAero team members to create a world class organization. One of the aspects that interested Rob in the company was the strong dedication to hire the US Armed Forces veterans.
Today, TurbineAero’s workforce includes 75% USA military veterans, and Rob remains extremely focused on furthering a company culture with the same values as its Armed Services. Rob’s dedication to the Armed Forces, doesn’t stop there. He is currently leading TurbineAero’s community efforts to help Folds of Honor, an organization that provides education scholarships to the children and spouses of the fallen service members. In addition, to maintaining the Armed Forces tie into TurbineAero, Rob initiated another community partnership; working with Arizona State University’s Engineering School to create an internship program.
Rob has much bigger plans for TurbineAero as he wants to create the largest and most comprehensive APU MRO services company in the world.
Top-notch Services offered by TurbineAero
TurbineAero bundled the MRO experience, to include: Repair & Overhaul; Accessories including LRU’s and Machine Parts; Engineering Technical Support; OEM Repairs; Development and Manufacturing of Parts Manufactured Approval (PMA); Designated Engineering Representative (DER) Repair; APU Customer Support Training; and APU Leases Spares Pool.
New APU product lines and services support both commercial and military customers. Since February 2017, when the organization became known as TurbineAero, it streamlined the industry with a global presence, employing over 200+ employees across its Arizona and Thailand facilities. The company has a direct service to the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa.
TurbineAero’s goal of being the most comprehensive, flexible, customer-oriented MRO services company in the world has led it to refocus its efforts on the customer to create custom solutions to meet their APU objectives. “With the current state of business, you must have the best pricing, the best quality, the best customer service to win long term deals, but more importantly listen to the customer to solve their specific needs,” says Rob.
Developing Complete Capabilities on New Platforms
TurbineAero develops complete capabilities on new platforms, which includes its most recent APS3200 addition. Rob asserts, “With this vast spectrum of experience, our ability to take a new product from whole to completely disassembled, to the detail level, then source the repair parts and rebuild to whole again, with successful certification, is a stellar precedent in this field.”
The long-term commitments of TurbineAero to its customers, and the desire to maintain the healthiest fleet of APUs possible, emphasizes the company’s expertise and maintains a teamwork-oriented atmosphere, solving current issues that hamper the industry today. To further increase innovation at TurbineAero:
- It has increased pneumatic, gearbox, load compressor, oil components, overall APU, power section and electrical component capabilities.
- Increased and modified the test cells.
- Developed test stands, test adapters, overhauled tooling.
- Developed and employed the most experienced on-site Engineering Team in the industry.
- Authored and continue to maintain technical FAA approved manuals.
- It provides quarterly training courses to cultivate and further its innovative APU MRO process.
Getting Future Ready
TurbineAero is developing methods to provide airlines the same information on older APUs as can be found on APU’s coming from the OEM today. While elaborating this, Rob adds, “One of the biggest obstacles facing our customers is management of suppliers for repairs of machine parts and Line Replaceable Units (LRU). Our customers have found that they have too many suppliers to track down and manage.”
TurbineAero has made the decision to be the general contractor for all the LRU’s and machine parts. In the past, the company would only work with LRU’s on its own capable listing. Now, TurbineAero is expanding to manage all APU’s for the customer. “This means that our customers can send us the LRU or machine part and we provide the service to them. In addition, TurbineAero plans to add capabilities to bring as much of the LRU work in-house as possible,” concludes Rob.
