Tech innovations meet luxury in airplane building

If you are afraid of flying, an airplane manufacturing facility is the last place you want to visit; aircraft are simply a massive amalgamation of rivets, steel, plastic and wires.

I discovered this last week during a visit to Bombardier Aerospace’s factory in Toronto, Canada, the manufacturing site of a commercial jet called the Dash 8 Q400.

To own one, you need to sign a purchase agreement a year in advance - to allow for the parts to be ordered from over five different countries and the approximately 2,160 man-hours needed to fix them together.

You also need Sh3.2 billion in your bank account.

The airplane’s parts, such as its wings, are shipped whole from as far as China, and using the unrushed and adept engineering hands of about 150 employees, consolidated into what a machine that is the safest form of travel.

Bombardier, which is headquartered in Montreal, has been manufacturing trains, commercial planes as well as private jets for centuries, a steep graduation from the snowmobiles it started out making.

The company’s commercial fleet cost as much as Sh9.2 billion while celebrities like musician Shawn “Jay Z” Carter have paid Bombardier much more for their personalised jets.

I had taken the long flight to the land of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to witness Jambojet take possession of one the Q400 planes and activate its regional expansion plan.

In November, Kenya Airways’ #ticker:KQ budget airline says it will be back to collect another Q400 and around seven more by 2022.

And as I stepped out of the bare belly of one of planes that was making its sluggish journey through the multistep manufacturing line, I asked my hosts what was so special about this particular aircraft.

Their immediate response  was that this is the next-generation aircraft; it builds on the successes of older models and is a out to discard past deficiencies.

Quiet

Oh, and that the Q stands for “Quiet”, they quickly added.

This brand of commercial aircraft have proven successful in Africa predominantly for two reasons; they are able to take off on tough (short and patchy) runaways and they are fuel efficient.

“The Q400 has high landing gear so it can comfortably land on unpaved, short and runways,” Paul Thomson, the general manager for Q400 Operations, said as he took me around the facility.

“Airports in Africa are getting congested and the aircraft’s jet like speed allow them to operate in short time slots. The plane has 14 extra seats than our competitor so our carriers will have a good return on investment.”

Bombardier has over the years sold hundreds of its planes in Kenya with operators like Jambojet, Safarilink, Fly540, and AirKenya Express as well as specialised one for use by the military.

Paul, 34, explained that Bombardier has about 20 customers in Africa flying 79 Q400s aircraft. Ethiopian Airlines leading the pack with approximately 30 of them feeding the Addis hub.

Globally, there are over 60 operators flying 530 of this type of aircraft. Jambojet’s plane, which has since been named Zuru Kenya, was the 555th Q400 plane to roll out of the Toronto plant.

Superior

When I asked Willem Hondius, Jambojet’s chief executive, why he has settled on this plane, he, like the Bombardier executives, cited its superior efficiency, ambience, and comfort.

Zuru Kenya’s capacity is 78 passengers, he said, offering customers ample legroom. However, the Q400 can be configured to accommodate three other configurations with a maximum of 90 seats.

Unlike older models that Jambojet operates, the next generation aircraft markets itself as “the only dual-class cabin in the turboprop market”, meaning that operators can have a seven business class seats – either at the back or front.

The likes of Arik Air (Nigeria), Rwandair and Ethiopian Airlines have this configuration, allowing their premium customers to fly in more comfort, but still at a budget.

Bigger cabin spaces allows storage of approximately 51 carry-on bags and enhances the aircraft’s turnaround time since “passengers can board and deplane in 30 minutes”.

Another selling point of the new Q400, Willem adds, is the light-emitting diode (LED) lighting in the cabins, a departure from the duller lighting that preceding models offered.

“The LED lighting creates a natural atmosphere in the cabin. This is the technology that is being used in bigger planes such as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner,” Willem adds.

While I acknowledged the improvements to the aircraft, I had to ask about the noise the propellers make. The Q400 is a turboprop, because it makes use of a turbine engine to drive an aircraft propeller.

This question was partly prompted by one of my friends who commented on a Q400 photo I posted on Facebook saying she had had a less than quiet ride on an older model of the plane.

Paul, unsurprisingly, had a ready answer for this too.

“The next generation plane has a new technology called the active noise vibration system (ANVS),” he said.

“This suppresses any vibrations coming from the prop blade by bounces it out at a different frequency in the opposite direction, keeping cabin noise to a minimum.”

But since the aircraft was still going through the final rounds of regulatory checks by the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA), I could not test this feature or any of the others advertised.

Bombardier’s main competitor in the turboprops class, and one of motivators to constantly innovate, is France-based ATR Aircraft. The firm is half-owned by European planemaker Airbus and half by Italy’s Leonardo.

While ATR remains more successful than Bombardier, the latter’s orders and deliveries have dropped in recent years, a dip which the Canadians are out to capitalise on.

“The Africa market looks promising for us. The interregional growth, the new airports being built, the amount of people want to travel more,” Paul said, adding that he was pleased that Jambojet settled on them.

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