Why an upcoming conference is important to Honda Aircraft's CEO

Michimasa Fujino, CEO of Greensboro-based Honda Aircraft Co., will travel to Geneva, Switzerland this week for the European Business Aviation Convention and Exposition.

by Kate Arcieri of www.bizjournals.com

Last week, Greensboro-based Honda Aircraft Co. announced a target date for obtaining Federal Aviation Administration certification for its $4.5 million lightweight, fuel-efficient business jet.

This week, Michimasa Fujino, the company's CEO, and a team of more than 40 will travel to Geneva, Switzerland, for the European Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition from May 21 to May 23.

It’s show time for Honda, a wholly owned subsidiary of American Honda Motor Co. (NYSE: HMC) that will showcase its jet to customers from around the world, make announcements on the product's development and provide a status update on the company's $20 million, 90,000-square-foot maintenance, repair and overhaul facility under construction at the Piedmont Triad International Airport. The facility will house the company’s customer service center.

Fujino spoke with The Business Journal on Monday about his expectations for the three-day event.

There are lots of aviation conventions. In your opinion, why is the EBACE convention particularly important for Honda? The European market is the second largest business aviation market in the world. That’s why almost all major manufacturers participate in EBACE. In addition, HondaJet's size—the lightjet market — is a strong prospect in Europe. It’s a very promising market so that is why we put a great emphasis on the European market. It is very important for us to introduce HondaJet in advance and make a presence for future prospects in Europe.

How is the European market different from the United States market? The European customer is conservative and also is more conscious about the environment, the efficiency. So maybe HondaJet is exactly matching their requirement. HondaJet is a very fuel efficient and compact and the best fit in the market.

Can you talk about what countries these prospective buyers will be coming from? All over Europe, from U.K., from Germany, France, Spain. We will have many prospects from Russia, East Europe and the Middle East. India as well.

Do you expect orders to be placed at this convention? There are many customers who are planning to purchase in a few years so it is a very good starting point to build a relationship with customers and also introduce HondaJet advantage. Sometimes (the) decision takes one year or two years and sometimes the decision is on the spot. It all depends upon the customer.

What are your expectations for the buyer mood at the conference this year? When we go to EBACE and make presentation, many customers are excited. Many customers tend to be more positive. (Now that the economy is further recovering), I expect this year’s mood is even more positive than last year.

Can you talk about the activities that customers will be able to do at the HondaJet area of the conference? We send a service team there along with the engineering team to introduce the HondaJet performance technology and let future customers experience the HondaJet interior mockup. So a HondaJet customer actually experiences the production-type interior on the spot. Also we explain ownership cost. They can get all the information needed for their decision.

I know Honda has more than 100 orders for the jet already. Do you have an expectation for how many more orders could potentially be placed at this convention? We don’t exactly describe the number, but we hope to get orders.

Honda has made major announcements at the convention before. Do you expect similar types of announcements to be made at this conference? We will update the current progress of the development and also we introduce our investment in Greensboro, North Carolina, and the MRO status.

Can you give us a hint on the MRO status now? At this moment, we are on schedule.

If FAA certification is obtained by the end of 2014, it’s entirely plausible that delivery could begin in 2015. Is that accurate? Certification is required for airplane delivery so certification is a first step. Our target is immediately after aircraft is certified, we start to deliver the HondaJet.

Source;
http://www.bizjournals.com/triad/blog/2013/05/qa-with-michimasa-fujino-ceo-honda.html?page=all