When push comes to shove
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Posted Date: 01/03/2008
Issue: Airside International March 2008
Publication: Airside International
The battle on the ramp to win lucrative contracts for tractor sales is more than just about price; for some there is a campaign to win hearts and minds too. If the buying process is partly driven by personal choice and preferred manufacturer, the onus is on the manufacturers to differentiate themselves to the market in order to capture buyers’ attention.
And let’s not forget that, increasingly, the airlines are the tractor manufacturers’ clients – less so the airports – and it is the airlines, with their various business models and their mixed fortunes that have to be won over. The manufacturers have much to say on how product differentiation is achieving this.
Product differentiation
Jace Morgan, President of Eagle Tugs, says, for him, product differentiation is all about functionality and reliability. “To differentiate our tugs functionally, we designed our tugs specifically to move aircraft, versus designing them to be like all other traditional tractors,” he comments. “Our TT series aircraft tractors also offer ergonomically correct operators’ compartments in which operators can slide in and slide out, versus continually climbing up and down as they do on tradition tractors. And, our aircraft tractors offer the operators full sight of the front and rear hitches through sight tunnels, versus having to use mirrors as they do on traditional tractors.”
Morgan maintains that, from a reliability standpoint, Eagle Tugs’ aircraft tugs have nearly 20 years of continuous product improvements behind them. So confident is this supplier that it has backed its TT series aircraft tractors with a three-year/3,000 hour warranty. “So far our new product development has been driven mostly by our customers’ needs and the marketability of our solution to our customers’ needs. For instance, we just went to market with a utility tow tractor which the US Army asked us to build,” Morgan remarks.
“This is a particularly competitive market,” confirms Mike Doane, Sales Director of Douglas Equipment. “Although we hear about a lot of money being spent on purchasing aircraft and millions of passengers travelling, buyers do not have huge sums of money to spend on GSE.” To win buyers’ attention, Doane says: “Our approach to the market is to have products that are fit for purpose based on simplicity of design and operation, built to a high specification within a price that we believe the market can sustain and customers are prepared to pay. Largely, we differentiate ourselves on quality, specification, product reliability, customer training programmes and after sales service and spare parts support.”
Douglas has been building aircraft tow tractors since 1947; towbarless tractors were introduced at Douglas in 1989. Doane says the drivers to innovate are operational and environmental as well, of course, as new aircraft related. “We also have to be mindful of the congestion on the ramps. Often our products have to be able to operate in very congested areas,” he reminds us. “When we were developing our range of towbarless and conventional tractors for the A380, whilst this is a very large aircraft, the tractors have to be able to manoeuvre in some very constrained areas at many airports.”
Reliability is key to product design and very much a manufacturer’s mantra. Hermann Brüggemann, Managing Director at Schopf Maschinenbau which manufactures GSE and conventional tow tractors for handling aircraft in every weight range, says that reliability, quality and low operating costs enable an operator to avoid spending unnecessary money in the long run. Brüggemann remarks that reliability translates into higher availability, which in turn results in fewer units being required for daily operations, further reducing capital expenditure. “Our customers realise that the future will become more and more money and safety related,” insists Brüggemann. Recent contract wins for Schopf include sales successes with Aviance in the UK for over 40 conventional tow tractors in various weight classes and with the British Ministry of Defence for 32 units of the F396 in the 50 ton weight class.
Carsten Schimkat, Sales Director at Goldhofer, a manufacturer of towbarless tractors, says: “The edge comes from quality, service and performance. We are not the cheapest. A low-priced product and high quality is a contradiction.” Schimkat explains that Goldhofer has concentrated its research and development hours on cabin design and technology to tug the A380. The tractor Goldhofer has designed for the A380 is capable of towing the super jumbo at 30km per hour at maximum takeoff weight. All products are available on an outright purchase, lease or rental arrangement; used and refurbished Goldhofer tractors are also available.
TLD Europe’s Technical Director, Laurent Decoux explains that many of this manufacturer’s customers are the freight integrator airlines like Fedex. Moving freight aircraft at large cargo hubs after dark when large numbers of freighters have to be moved on the ramp requires planning and the right tools. He says the towbarless tractor is the right equipment for such operations. Decoux adds that towbarless tractors were originally designed for maintenance towing over longer distances and at higher speeds. The aim at TLD was also to develop towbarless tractors for pushback. “We offer both kinds of tractor for both applications,” remarks Decoux. “We are working on the simplicity and reliability of the equipment, but we are also using the latest low emission diesel engines,” Decoux comments. “TLD is additionally working with electrical power. This opens other doors for us. Having installed an electrical driveline, we can also think about potential new technology: hybrid power and fuel cell technology, for example.”
Nick Heemskerk is the Manager of Product Development, FMC Technologies, Airport Equipment. FMC offers a full array of conventional and towbarless aircraft tow tractors to meet the requirements of most commercial aircraft. He says: “We have developed very rugged products. We have relatively few frills and, if there is any trend over the last couple of years, it is that we have upgraded the driveline components – the transmission to the axles.”
Heemskerk points out that a towbarless tractor picks up the nose landing gear, plants it in the cradle and then limits the maximum tractive braking and steering forces based on the type of aircraft in question to prevent damage to the nose landing gear. “We’ve automated those processes as much as we can. We automatically detect which type of aircraft we’re dealing with based on the size of the nose landing gear and then limiting the forces happens automatically,” he explains. “We’ve also automated the process of planting the nose landing gear to a large degree. Our aim has been to make the towbarless tractor a piece of equipment that is comparable to other GSE, both in operation and in maintenance. We’ve cleaned up the dash board, we’ve automated whatever we could and replaced it with one joystick for forward, neutral and reverse; and one joystick for picking up and releasing the aircraft.”
Greener by design
All the manufacturers are preoccupied with the environmental implications of the equipment they produce and the regulatory obligation on them to bring to market more planet conscious vehicles. All we need now is a coherent enforcement process. With reference to towbarless tractors, Heemskerk points out that FMC Technologies constantly keeps up with environmental regulations. “As we make those changes, we upgrade the other components,” he says. “On the towbarless tractors, there has been a lot more development. FMC entered that market later than some of the other players and we entered the market through acquisition. Since we acquired that product line, we have made some significant design changes.”
Jace at Eagle Tugs is undeterred by the inconsistent compliance in the market: “A great deal of our engineering efforts are spent updating our existing products with emission controlled engines to meet all of the latest environmental requirements, as well as designing “green” alternatives to help control emissions. We don’t get many requests for alternative fuels at this point, but we are putting in the engineering time so we can offer green alternatives for our customers when they need it.”
He continues: “We have developed a very efficient electric line of tow tractors for industrial use that we are testing as a baggage tractor and possibly even a very light jet aircraft tractor. We are also in the process of transitioning our experience with efficient electric drive trains into our line of aircraft and utility tow tractors. Whatever new drive train or innovation we implement, it will have to pass our high quality and reliability standards before going to market.”
Goldhofer has its environmental credentials reviewed annually. “Every year we have to come up with a new generation of diesel engines in order to comply with the latest emission regulations,” Schimkat says.
Beyond the ramp
Much has been made of the potential for tractors to augment their role by moving aircraft beyond the ramp to reduce aircraft engine emissions and improve the airport environment. “At the moment, despatch towing is not permitted,” says Doane, “even though many operators looked at despatch towing with the advent of towbarless tractors. Aircraft nose landing gears are not designed to withstand the much higher acceleration and braking forces that would be imposed upon them by a towbarless tractor performing despatch towing operations at much higher speeds with fully laden and fully fuelled aircraft .”
He explains that the aircraft’s nose landing gear is not braked and it is designed primarily to withstand the impact loads during landing. “If you were to be towing a 400 tonne aircraft at speeds up to 25-30kn per hour (15-20 miles per hour), the acceleration and braking forces imposed on the nose landing gear would be substantial and current aircraft nose landing gears are not designed for this,” comments Doane. In fact, some industry trials have demonstrated that the extra weight that would be required to strengthen nose landing gears to withstand despatch towing operations would result in more fuel being burned in flight than would be saved on the ground by despatch towing.
Other trials, says Doane, have indicated that despatch towing of a fully loaded aircraft by a towbarless tractor at higher speeds could substantially reduce the fatigue life of the nose landing gear and hence substantially reduce the aircraft’s nose landing gear’s operational life. If despatch towing is ever to become a reality, it is down to the airframe manufacturers and the towbarless tractor manufacturers to put their heads together and work with the airlines and airport authorities to make it happen as it would involve a considerable number of extra towing tractors being required and major changes to airport infrastructures and operational procedures. “If things were to change, we would be ready to jump on it because we realise there are potentially very big savings to be made,” adds Heemskerk.
Schimkat at Goldhofer points out that maintenance towing is not as problematic as the aircraft is being towed at empty weight. “There are big savings to be made in maintenance towing,” points out Heemskerk. Fuel price hikes are creating economic as well as environmental interest in despatch towing. Decoux at TLD says: “With fuel at the price we have today, all scenarios are becoming interesting. A reduction in taxiing has become a big saving for airlines now. When an aircraft is taxiing on its own engines, it is using tonnes of fuel rather than litres of fuel used when the same operation is undertaken with a tractor.”
But we have to be realistic about the future role for tugs beyond the ramp. From the theory point of view, yes, tugs could play an active role in taxiway operations but, some commentators suggest that, in practice, it will not happen because operators will need to acquire a larger fleet of tugs because each of them will be “on” the aircraft for longer periods of time. Airport congestion may also prevent the diversification of tractor operations beyond the ramp.
Coming to market
While cost of ownership issues encourage most manufacturers to offer leasing and rental services along with outright purchase, most manufacturers also see their role in assisting with ownership issues as going beyond this imperative. Comments from Morgan at Eagle Tugs sum up the sentiment in the market: “The best way that we have assisted our customers with the cost of ownership is in concentrating on the quality and reliability of our tugs. Our goal is to provide our customers with equipment that is always working for them.”
These have been good times for the tug manufacturers and, the fierce competition aside, the last year has seen much market growth. “2007 has been an excellent year for us,” says Heemskerk at FMC. “The markets in Europe and Asia were already doing very well for us and, in 2007, on top of that came a revitalisation of the US market.”
Morgan adds that, from talking to Eagle Tugs’ customers, the biggest challenges in the market have been finding quality equipment, and obtaining equipment and parts for other GSE when needed. Manufacturers are reporting in concert that the challenge for them has been handling growth while, at the same time, innovating sufficiently to differentiate their products.
New aircraft; new markets
The battle to win hearts, minds and budgets is being fought in new territories where fleets are being ramped up in line with the growth in GDP. Such markets offer lucrative opportunities to US and European tractor manufacturers but first competition from indigenous suppliers has to be fought off. Weihai Guangtai Airport Equipment Co is a Chinese GSE manufacturer with a large family of conventional tractors covering the 10 tonne, 18 tonne, 20 tonne, 22 tonne, 27 tonne, 45 tonne, 50 tonne and 70 tonne market. General Manager, Kevin Yang, concurs that competition is steep. “At the end of 2007, you could find our equipment in operation at almost every airport in China,” says Yang. “Most of our clients are ground handling companies, airports, airlines and other aviation organisations.”
Yang confirms that the Weihai Guangtai Airport Equipment Co is working on a new tractor type especially for the A380. “Not only tug, but also other airside equipment, like catering trucks and pallet loaders,” he says. With after sales support operations established all over China, Yang talks in terms of reliability, efficiency and safety on the ramp.
The business of moving business jets
JETporter, a Tronair company, has been approved by Cessna for the use of JETporter towbarless tugs with the airframer’s aircraft. Paul Spinazze, Engineering Manager of Tronair, explains: “Our tugs can move aircraft of 100,000lb or less, basically all business aircraft including Gulfstreams, Cessnas and Falcons.” But the company sells equally to airlines, FBOs and private customers.
“Our tugs use a DC motor drive system with a digital controller and our units are all electric which means no pollution,” Spinazze remarks. “The tugs have been engineered with significant input from our customers. We have recently incorporated a suspension system and a power steering system into our JP100S units as a result of our customers’ feedback.” Spinazze talks of quality and reliability when he says: “You wouldn't want to risk your $30 million aircraft on just any piece of equipment.”
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