44 | Flight International | 10-16 November 2015 flightglobal.com
BUSINESS AVIATION
SPECIAL REPORT
STEPHEN TRIMBLE MELBOURNE, FLORIDA
For Brazilian champion Embraer, a growing presence in
Florida is tapping a huge local talent pool that may kick
off a move on the top end of the business jet market
LEGACY
LAUNCHPAD
The Florida site started for Phenom assemblyEmbraerI
n less than a year, a new name will join the
top rank of North American cities hosting
final assembly sites for business jet aircraft,
rivalling the dominance of Wichita, Kan-
sas; Dorval, Quebec; and Savannah, Georgia.
That city will be Melbourne, Florida.
A third planned expansion at Embraer’s site
next to Melbourne International airport is under
way. When the expansion opens in mid-2016,
Melbourne will have the capacity to deliver more
than 100 business jets annually from a central
Florida site that opened only three years ago.
That puts the Brazilian airframer within striking
distance of the annual output of the Cessna Cita-
tion Jet plant in Wichita, Bombardier’s combined
Global and Challenger factory in Dorval, and
Gulfstream’s widebody complex in Savannah.
Embraer’s expansion in Melbourne coin-
cides with the manufacturer’s evolution as a
global concern, with manufacturing facilities
in Brazil, the USA, Portugal and China.
The Melbourne site is the company’s most
ambitious move outside Brazil. It will be the
final assembly location for four Embraer ex-
ecutive jets – the Phenom 100, Phenom 300,
Legacy 450 and Legacy 500. It includes a jet
delivery centre and what will become the
company’s largest engineering centre outside
Brazil, employing 200 staff at peak levels de-
signing interiors and premium seating.
The site is expanding as Embraer invests in
US companies, last year acquiring California-
based Aero Seating Technologies (AST). The
rebranded Embraer AST, including an aircraft
seat factory, is moving to Titusville, Florida, a
town next to Melbourne. By mid-2016,
“When you add these US
capabilities, we can think
higher than we used to”
PAULO PIRES
MD, Embraer Melbourne engineering centre
Embraer will have spent eight years and about
$150 million to complete the manufacturing
and engineering complex in central Florida.
It is possibly only the beginning. Embraer
has made no secret of plans to explore the mar-
ket for large cabin, ultra-long-range business
jets. The decision on where to make them re-
mains more distant, but Melbourne’s rapid rise
as Embraer’s plant for executive jets makes it a
prime candidate. In the near-term, Embraer
could expand capacity with more assembly
tasks on-site. The first step is to keep assembly
in Melbourne on track through mid-2016.
Embraer opened its Melbourne factory in- The company planned to make only a
portion of the Phenom 100 and 300 jets being
delivered to North American customers, but
its remit was expanded to become the exclu-
sive final assembly site. Embraer then an-
nounced an expanded factory would begin
producing Legacy 450 and 500 jets as well.
The expansion will add a spacious new wing
perpendicular to the Phenom assembly line.
Both the Phenom and Legacy assembly lines will
run length-wise down the new wing. The space
occupied by the first half of the Phenom assem-
bly line will stage kits and subassemblies.
The Melbourne site brings Embraer closer to
major North American suppliers. The Phenoms
have Garmin avionics and Pratt & Whitney Cana-
da engines. The Legacy 450 and 500 feature
Rockwell Collins avionics and Honeywell en-
gines. The major structures, however, are built up
in Brazil and Portugal. Major fuselage sections
and wing assemblies are shipped to a deepwater
port in Jacksonville, Florida, then loaded onto
trucks and driven south to Melbourne.
Embraer is not the only aerospace company
to discover the attractiveness of the US south-
east for manufacturing. Gulfstream has been
assembling a series of large business jets in
Savannah since the late 1960s. Airbus recent-
ly opened a final assembly line in Mobile,
Alabama, for A320 airliners. And a potential
Embraer rival, HondaJet, expects to start de-
livering light jets from a sprawling factory in
Greensboro, North Carolina.
Embraer is no stranger to the US southeast.
Just a decade after its formation in 1969, the
company opened a US sales office in Florida.
As the Brasilia turboprop became established
in US fleets, Embraer established a permanent
sales and maintenance hub next to Fort
Lauderdale-Hollywood International airport.
Embraer’s defence business also has a
growing presence in Florida. In the northern
city of Jacksonville, it builds Super
Tucanos for Sierra Nevada, which has a con-
tract with the US Air Force to deliver the light
attack fighters and advanced trainers to part-
ner militaries, such as the Afghan air force.DOWNTURN OPPORTUNITY
When Embraer sought an executive jet assem-
bly centre in the USA in 2008, Florida was
not the only option. In Wichita, for example,
the global downturn would have severe reper-
cussions for local business jet manufacturers
Cessna, Hawker Beechcraft and Bombardier
Learjet, creating a glut of jobless experienced
workers and surplus production capacity.
Airbus quickly established an engineering
centre in Wichita.
Embraer was instead attracted to central Flor-
ida. Melbourne offered logistical advantages in-