Paris, June 19 (IANS) French aerospace majors Thales and Liebherr have come together to develop technologies for new generation green aircraft, the companies announced Friday at the Paris Air Show.
“Thales and Liebherr, as tier one suppliers, aim to support airframe designers with power optimized aircraft (POA) architectures by delivering innovative solutions for the technology development of greener aircraft,” a joint statement issued here said.

The POA concept aims at reducing the consumption of non-propulsive power on board civil aircraft.

Jean-Marc Alias, Thales’ head of electrical systems activities, said: “With Liebherr Aerospace we have the same understanding of our customer’s key requirements. Our technology developments, which include on-board power management centres, are driven by the cost effective solutions we deliver to our customers and end-users”.

According to Liebherr-Aerospace Toulouse President Andre Benhamou: “By bringing together our specific competencies we are able to strengthen our powers of innovation.”

The partnership has an open approach to breakthrough innovation in the optimisation and application of technology, the companies said, adding that the aim was to support airframe designers at the earliest stages of aircraft conception.

On its part, Thales separately announced it had been selected by Turkey’s Onur Air to provide support services to its fleet of eight Airbus A-321 aircraft, by providing a comprehensive asset management service including on-site inventory, repair management and return to inventory.

“This service covers Thales’ equipment and a range of critical components from other original equipment manufacturers (OEMs),” the company said in a statement.

Thales has been providing support services to Onur Air since 2007 through an ABTH++

(avionics by the hour++) contract, which is a door-to-door component service based on

equipment standard exchange.

“Given the positive performance and economic benefits of this service Onur Air has decided to outsource the management of other major OEMs equipment to Thales,” the statement said.

“This clearly places Thales as a Tier 1 service provider in the component market. We are confident that this new service will bring further operational savings to our customers and allow them to concentrate on their core activity,” said Daniel Malka, head of civil aerospace services worldwide for Thales.