It was a gutsy call when Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. announced a new mission statement a year after elevating Jeffrey Pino to president.
“We pioneer flight solutions that bring people home everywhere … every time.”
If guaranteeing aircraft will stay aloft is a claim no manufacturer can ”“ or should ”“ make, under Pino Sikorsky lived up to the “pioneer” element harkening back to its namesake founder.
Pino”™s run as president of Sikorsky is coming to a sooner-than-expected close, after parent United Technologies Corp. announced it would promote Mick Maurer as Pino”™s replacement come July.
Hartford-based UTC stated Pino is taking early retirement, without any additional reasons for the 57-year-old”™s departure from the post that represents the pinnacle in a lifelong career in the helicopter industry, including his days as U.S. Army test pilot and subsequent 17 years with Textron Inc.”™s Bell Helicopter division.
Since 2006, Pino has yet to accept standing and repeated Fairfield County Business Journal requests for an interview, and a spokesman did not schedule one as of press deadline.
Save for Jeff Immelt who took the reins of General Electric Co. in the days before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, no newly minted CEO has found himself in a tougher first few days than Pino, after SikorskyӪs union triggered a six-week strike immediately after his promotion. UTC would dispatch future CEO Louis Ch̻nevert to oversee SikorskyӪs operational recovery under Pino. In late 2006, a Pentagon committee reprimanded Sikorsky for its quality controls in the wake of the strike.
Within a year, however, Sikorsky would nail down what remains UTC”™s biggest-ever contract for as many as 800 Black Hawk and Seahawk helicopters as the U.S. military waged desert wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Helicopter production would soar at Sikorsky over the next few years, with the company adding more than 2,000 employees in Stratford and nearby satellite facilities, boosting total employment to more than 9,400 people.
If Pino inherited a wartime defense manufacturer with a proven workhorse in the Black Hawk, he also inherited a company heading into the darkest economy of the rotorcraft era. With extracting the country from those wars the stated White House aim since 2006, since becoming Sikorsky president Pino has been working to expand the company”™s sales to other sectors ”“ most notably foreign governments eyeing the U.S. approach to terrorism and counterinsurgency operations.
”˜Anywhere but Connecticut”™
UTC”™s 2007 acquisition of PZL Mielec in Poland remains the transaction that defines the Pino era at Sikorsky, creating a major new outlet in Europe to produce Black Hawks for international sale.
If providing an immediate release valve for overloaded production in Stratford, PZL Mielec in the long term represents a threat to employment at Sikorsky headquarters if U.S. government and commercial sales go into a tailspin in future years and international sales increase. In 2010, Pino and other UTC executives reiterated an “anywhere but Connecticut” vow for expansion, on grounds the state is too expensive a place to do business.
“As we were tripling, literally, our revenue of the last couple of years, our facilities in Connecticut could not contain that kind of growth,” Pino said at a 2010 conference at the University of Pennsylvania”™s Wharton School of Business. “We had a great opportunity to maintain a solid, professional workforce in Connecticut and then move a lot of this needed capacity to lower-cost sources. We found a tremendous opportunity in Poland with a factory that used to build a MiG aircraft fighter a day ”“ a Russian fighter a day ”“ but basically idle.
“The quality of the workmanship is good, the barriers in terms of logistics and licensing are being ameliorated,” Pino said. “We”™ll increase the production that is done overseas as we move forward ”“ without a doubt.”
”˜What Igor was all about”™
If the offshoring of production will be a big permanent part of Pino”™s legacy, on his watch Sikorsky also reinvigorated its commitment to high-tech development, creating Sikorsky Innovations as an incubator for new ideas.
When Pino became president, Sikorsky was already pushing hard in 2006 to build its X2 prototype that would set a helicopter speed record in 2010, with stacked, counter-rotating main rotors augmented by a rear pusher prop.
Sikorsky extended its high-tech prowess inside the aircraft as well to include “glass cockpits” with computer instrumentation rather than standard gauges, “fly-by-wire” systems eliminating hydraulic controls, remotely controlled aircraft, electric engines and software allowing pilots to configure rotors for specific mission demands, whether for speed, lift or stealth.
And Sikorsky technology was at the center of the United States”™ most ballyhooed operation since the invasion of Iraq ”“ the Pakistan raid that resulted in the death of Osama Bin Laden, with subsequent reports speculating on a mysterious Black Hawk configuration that camouflaged the sound of the helicopters”™ approach.
Technology also contributed to Sikorsky”™s biggest black eye on Pino”™s watch ”“ a multibillion-dollar contract to supply Canada with new maritime helicopters, with stubborn bugs in the mission software resulting in delayed shipments and acrimony in Ottawa.
And Canada was the scene of Sikorsky”™s greatest disaster in Pino”™s years with Sikorsky, after a helicopter carrying 18 people plunged into the ocean off Newfoundland, with only one person surviving the crash. The accident was blamed on a broken stud in the gearbox that resulted in a loss of oil.
As a pilot, Pino knows as well as any the perils of his chosen profession, with companies such as Sikorsky making their living by pushing against the envelope of physics and engineering, with lives hanging on decisions seemingly as innocuous as the basic bolt used to hold parts together.
Having pushed Sikorsky”™s X2 into Pentagon view as a new paradigm for faster helicopters, in 2009 Pino reflected on what may have been his most important role as the caretaker of Igor Sikorsky”™s legacy for more than six years.
“I honestly don”™t know where or if we”™ll take it anywhere else,” Pino told AINtv.com. “What I do know is that every day we have worked on it, we have learned something else that can be applied throughout the company.
“To keep technology always ahead of us is what Igor was all about in pioneering flight, and we”™re going to do the same thing,” Pino said.
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