Bengal Aerospace

Most aerospace companies describe themselves by what they make. Bengal Aerospace is easier to understand by what it refuses to depend on someone else for. The tagline is meant literally: from the ground up — the people, the ground infrastructure, the flight systems, the data and the maintenance record are each owned by a division of the company rather than assembled from outside.

The five fit together in an order that is not arbitrary.

• The Bengal Aviation Initiative builds the people. An awareness and capacity building platform, it has trained 120 students on drone operations, maintenance and radio through partner schools in Thakurgaon and Jamalpur — the supply of trained hands every other division draws on.
• JCB Ground Support builds the ground. Aerospace needs strong and articulated ground support systems, and the company builds its own support centres rather than contracting the function out.
• Plavata Systems builds the flight systems. Airframe, avionics and satellite systems are designed and executed in-house, which keeps the people who drew a system reachable while it is being built and tested.
• DFLO carries the data. Every aerospace environment needs accurate and fast data management, because almost everything an organisation knows about an aircraft is a record rather than the aircraft itself.
• Fleet Record holds the maintenance. The maintenance organisation is the backbone of the company, and the fleet is maintained solely through one portal — one route in, one history per aircraft.

Read in one direction it is a supply chain: people, then ground, then systems, then the data about them, then the record of their upkeep. Read in the other it is a feedback loop — what maintenance finds is what engineering needs to know, and what the ground learns is what the next cohort should be taught.