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Our Airline Support Teams work with airlines around the world. Find out how they’re helping to keep flights moving during the COVID-19 outbreak.

As the world navigates the COVID-19 outbreak, our people are doing incredible things to help our customers, keep our supply chains moving and assist hospitals, armies, governments and communities around the world. Increasingly, they’re using cutting-edge technology and data to do so, thinking differently and achieving extraordinary goals.

While many of our people working from home, some are continuing to work – at a safe distance – at our global facilities, keeping our production lines moving, monitoring the many cargo flights that are delivering aid and essential supplies, and assisting armed forces as they provide vital support to communities.

Our Airline Support Teams work at airports around the world to support our customers. They do everything they can to make sure Rolls-Royce-powered aircraft are ready to take off on time, every time.

Here’s how they’re continuing to support customers on their vital missions, whether that’s repatriating citizens, keeping supply chains moving, or delivering aid and medical equipment.

Supporting flights from home

Steve Shinfield, Senior Service Representative, Memphis, Tennessee, USA.

Steve Shinfield, Senior Service Representative, Memphis, Tennessee, USA.

I’m now mostly working remotely, which brings its challenges, and I miss the daily interaction. I’m making more phone calls to keep in touch with customers and colleagues, and we’re having team calls frequently.

We’re doing everything we can to help customers during such a difficult time for our industry and we’re here for them for any help and support they need. While commercial flights have reduced significantly, planes delivering cargo around the world have become ever more critical and we need to ensure engines are available at all times.

Aaron Hillman, Service Representative, Houston, Texas, USA.

Aaron Hillman, Service Representative, Houston, Texas, USA.

I’m making sure that I am always available, which is no different to any other day. My customers know that they are still my top priority even during unusual circumstances and I know that our whole team has the same mentality.

On a normal day I go to our field office, which is at a cargo customer’s maintenance hangar. I have the pleasure of working face-to-face with my customer every day, along with our resident powerplant engineer. My main priority is to provide fast answers and resolutions to their issues to avoid any interruptions to flights.

The main challenge during this period has been that I’m unable to interact face-to-face with our customers and get a better feel of their operations. Even though I’ve been keeping up with the daily activities, it doesn’t feel the same, and I’m looking forward to a time when we can all see each other again.

Supporting airlines as they switch to cargo

Photo credit Airbus

Beatriz Sanchez-Barba, Chief Service Representative, Madrid, Spain.

Beatriz Sanchez-Barba, Chief Service Representative, Madrid, Spain.

I usually start my day by looking at data on airlines’ overnight operations, before heading to the airport, where I meet with my customers and make sure they’re getting any support they need.

I’m working from home now, but I’m keeping the same routine. I’m attending meetings virtually or over the phone and find I’m actually speaking to my colleagues and customers more often!

Our airline customers’ priorities have changed, and we’re adapting to that. For example, we’re helping customers to take care of their engines while they are parked. This is really important and we’re working closely with our engineering colleagues to make sure we prevent any issues once the engines come back into service.

Although in Spain and Italy flights have reduced dramatically, my customers are operating humanitarian and repatriation flights and I’m very happy we can support them, as these flights are essential to help health services get the right protective equipment.

I’m proud of the work our team is doing in these difficult times; we’ve adapted to the circumstances and we’re here any time our customers need us.

Steven Russell, Chief Field Service Representative, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

I lead a team in Addis Ababa which provides 24/7 support to customers.

A typical day before COVID-19 could be quite varied. The job involved lots of daily interaction with customers, be it engineering, boroscoping (where we use a camera to look inside an engine), planning or logistics and maintenance.

We also update data, liaise with our Aircraft Control Centre in the UK and work with our regional team in Abu Dhabi.

I think in the early days of COVID -19 nothing much really changed, and we had some time to plan for how we could support customers. We looked at how we could work remotely, or train airline engineers on Rolls-Royce processes.

However, our team is now working across two different continents, as two of our team members were in the UK when travel restrictions were put in place. We decided to split the tasks differently; I look after face-to-face interaction with customers and my colleagues take care of work that can easily be done from home.

We need to try and keep aircraft flying whenever they need to, and at the same time we all need to keep ourselves safe. Customers are still flying Rolls-Royce powered aircraft, initially on repatriation flights then in recent weeks mostly cargo, with PPE boxes on seats. We also need to ensure that the aircraft that are not flying are preserved correctly, so they can return to service in good condition.