Embraer yesterday announced that spare parts for its business jets are now available in Dubai through a partnership with the UK’s CEVA Logistics. The latter company’s facility in Jebel Ali provides parts for customers in the Middle East, North Africa and India. Some 3,000 spares for the Legacy and the Lineage are already available to customers and authorized service centers. Next year, Phenom 100 and 300 parts will be available, too.
Colin Steven, vice president for marketing and sales, said the slowdown in business jet sales has been softer in the Middle East. “Fewer last-minute cancellations happened; the market here remains more buoyant than in other regions,” he said. He added that Embraer needed the recently announced Legacy 650 to offer a Dubai-to-London range. Embraer is here with three business jets on the static display–a Phenom 100, a Legacy 600 and a Lineage 1000.
In the UK, Embraer has trained nearly 20 pilots on the Phenom 100 light jet at CAE’s Burgess Hill, UK facility. A CAE-Embraer joint venture there operates a Phenom 100 full flight simulator. It started operations in September, after receiving EASA certification.
The Middle East is a marketplace with “money to spend on business jets,” according to Embraer Middle East executive aviation regional sales director Tony Fitzpatrick. Business aircraft in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates account for half of the 350 units in the Middle East fleet, which has taken 90 business airplanes of all types in the past three years.
The ERJ 135BJ Legacy 600 on display, recently acquired new by the Panamanian government, is to be delivered next month, according to Ricardo Sampaio Fogaca, one of two Embraer captains crewing the aircraft here. Legacy 600s have proved very popular in the Middle East where more than 20 are in service. The Brazilian manufacturer has leased this example for demonstrations that took place in Africa and Europe ahead of the show.
After carrying aerospace journalists from London and Paris to the Jordanian capital Amman for show-related briefings 10 days ago, the 600 flew a client to Johannesburg, South Africa, before making a trip to Nairobi. Following a sales demonstration in Entebbe, Uganda, last week, it flew to Dubai. It may be used for post-show marketing before returning to São Paulo, Brazil, for delivery.
The region’s first Phenom 300, expected to reach the customer last week, was among “quite a few aircraft being delivered to the Middle East,” said Fitzpatrick.
