Matt Thurber, editor-in-chief at AIN Media Group, has been flying since 1975 and writing about aviation since 1978 and now has the best job in the world, running editorial operations for Aviation International News, Business Jet Traveler, and FutureFlight.aero. In addition to working as an A&amp;P mechanic on everything from Piper Cubs to turboprops, Matt taught flying at his father’s flight school in Plymouth, Mass., in the early 1980s, flew for an aircraft owner/pilot, and for two summer seasons hunted swordfish near the George’s Banks off the East Coast from a Piper Super Cub. An ATP certificated fixed-wing pilot and CFII and commercial helicopter pilot, Matt is type-rated in the Citation 500 and Gulfstream V/550. Based in the Pacific Northwest, Matt and his team cover the entire aviation scene including business aircraft, helicopters, avionics, safety, manufacturing, charter, fractionals, technology, air transport, advanced air mobility, defense, and other subjects of interest to AIN, BJT, and FutureFlight readers.

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Matt Thurber

Collins Aerospace is a prominent aerospace and defense company specializing in the development and manufacture of advanced technology solutions. They offer a wide range of products and services, including avionics, aircraft interiors, mission systems, and space systems. 

Collins Aerospace has “been on a journey of transformation,” according to Cynthia Muklevicz, v-p of global airlines and lessors customer excellence. The transformation is intended to improve customer service, continue development of innovative solutions, and return a profit to shareholders.
Speaking with AIN at the Dubai Airshow, Muklevicz explained that the company’s approach to customers too often resulted in sending multiple sales experts to call on a customer, and the transformation is designed to streamline that process.
“We listened to a bunch of different customers, and we got a consensus that it would be a better way to have a single point of contact, because it would be faster, more expeditious, more accountable, and we could bring solutions across the board,” she said.
Now Collins is splitting this approach into three channels: airlines and lessors (Muklevicz’s purview), commercial aircraft manufacturers, and defense. Each of those channels will have leaders in charge of teams that will cover two to four customers—for example, airlines or lessors—and there will be only one point of contact (an account executive) for those customers.
“They will be the one point of contact to go into that airline, cultivating the relationship, or expanding on one that they have today, and then go across the Collins businesses and be the accountable party, to be that conduit into the organization so that we can be faster with our information,” she said. “We can be more aligned on when a customer tells us what their needs are, and this person can take it back into the organization and educate the organization.”
Instead of being subject matter experts, the account executives will be product-agnostic, Muklevicz explained. “They're going to be relationship experts for that airline or lessor customer.” However, Collins will still have subject matter experts so the account executives can call on them when necessary.
Collins Aerospace has some experience with this approach through its interiors team, which already covers a variety of product lines. “We’re just going to take the goodness that we’ve had on [those] products, and scale that to something larger,” she said. Plans call for an official rollout of this effort in late December or early January. “We’re populating the team right now and assigning customers, as well as getting some initial training so that we can speak intelligently about the different product lines.
“I think with that one point of contact, we’re going to try and eliminate some of the processes of trying to flow information into the organization,” Muklevicz concluded. “There are going to be fewer entry points, so we’re faster and more nimble to respond to what customers’ needs are.”

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