Aerospace and Aviation Sustainment

Sourcing and supply support for organizations responsible for keeping aircraft and aviation capability serviceable, with particular attention to the requirements that have become difficult.

Fleets Outlive Their Supply Base

Aviation sustainment has a structural problem that gets worse every year an aircraft stays in service. Airframes are kept flying far beyond their original planning horizon because they still do the job and because replacing them is expensive. The supply base behind them does not extend on the same schedule. Component manufacturers exit categories. Production lines close. Electronic parts reach end of life on commercial timescales measured in years while the platform they support is planned in decades. Repair capability for a specific item comes to rest with two shops, then one.

The operational consequence is familiar to anyone who runs a mature fleet. Items that were routine become long lead. Long lead becomes unobtainable. An aircraft is held for a component whose entire remaining world supply is a shelf somewhere, and nobody is certain where.

The work of sustainment sourcing is closing that gap: finding what still exists, identifying what can support the requirement when the original source cannot, and doing it before the shortage becomes an availability problem.

What Nortrane Sources

Nortrane supports sustainment requirements across the categories that keep aviation capability serviceable.

Aircraft components and accessories. Structural, mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, and fuel system components and accessories, including items no longer in production and items where the qualified supply base has narrowed.

Engine and propulsion components. Engine accessories, modules, and associated components, together with the repair and overhaul capability that supports them.

Avionics and line replaceable units. Avionics, LRUs, displays, computers, and associated units, including sourcing for aging configurations and the assessment of what current capability can support an older installation.

Navigation and communications equipment. Navigation, positioning, and timing equipment, and airborne and ground communications equipment.

Electrical and electronic components. Electrical assemblies, harnesses, connectors, power components, and electronic parts, where obsolescence and traceability requirements bear most heavily.

Ground support equipment. Test equipment, servicing equipment, handling and maintenance support equipment, and the ancillary items that keep a maintenance operation working.

Repair and overhaul sourcing. Identification of qualified repair, overhaul, and test capability for specific items, including capability for items whose original support arrangements have lapsed.

Consumables, expendables, and support items. The routine categories that become a problem when a supply relationship ends rather than when the item becomes scarce.

Requirements That Have Already Failed Elsewhere

A meaningful share of the sustainment work that reaches Nortrane has already been through normal channels. The requirement has been quoted, chased, and returned as unavailable, or quoted at a lead time that makes it unusable.

Our starting position on these is that unavailable usually means something narrower than it sounds. It can mean the item is genuinely out of production with no remaining source, and sometimes it does. More often it means the item is out of production but supported by a repair or manufacture-to-print capability that was never on the approved source list. Or that a source exists but does not respond to inquiries of the form it received. Or that the requirement was specified as a part number when what is actually needed is a function that a current item can perform. Or that the remaining supply sits with an organization that does not sell into the client’s region and would consider it if approached properly.

Establishing which of these is true is the first piece of work, and it determines everything after it.

Lifecycle Support and Supply Continuity

For organizations planning further ahead than the current shortage, the more valuable work is anticipatory. Which categories in the current support profile are dependent on a single source. Which electronic components are approaching end of life. Where a repair capability rests with one organization whose position is uncertain. What a support horizon of another fifteen years implies for categories that are already thin.

That analysis, done before a shortage rather than during one, is consistently cheaper than the alternative. It also produces options, because a category examined early can be addressed through additional qualification, planned buys, or alternative pathways, whereas a category examined during an aircraft-on-ground event can only be addressed through whatever is available at that moment.

Related work is covered under supply chain and obsolescence management.

How These Engagements Run

A requirement arrives in general form. We assess what it calls for, establish what the realistic pathways are, and come back with an honest position, including where the honest position is that no viable source remains. Where pathways exist, we identify and qualify sources, engage them, and coordinate the commercial work to supply.

We ask clients not to send technical data, drawings, or specifications carrying distribution restrictions through the website. General category, application, quantity, and timeline are sufficient to begin.