PROFILE
French words, phrases and idioms. These were an inherent byproduct of being an American unit of a company that designs all of and makes most of its helicopters at Marignane in the south of France. “I had kinda learned to understand what
they meant, but we couldn’t use those terms in the manuals our North American customers would be using,” he says. “There’s no way their mechanics would have understood some of those things. Some were pretty funny. My favorite was a set of instructions about cleaning a rotor hub. It said, ‘Offer up the hub and wipe with white spirits.’ I knew exactly what that meant: ‘position the hub and clean with alcohol’ — but it sounded like we were giving instructions on how to hold a séance.” Pence says that by 1999 he was too old to
continue on the rodeo circuit and was running low on money, so he returned to American Eurocopter. “This being an executive was certainly not on my career path,” he says while shaking his head. Pence thought he’d spend the rest of his life
turning wrenches happily. He had earned high marks before he left Aerospatiale in 1991 by working in the customer service department and coordinating the power-by-the-hour and leased helicopter maintenance programs. His new bosses quickly involved him in helping write bid proposals in response to requests for proposals from government agencies and large corporations looking to place large orders for helicopters. Pence’s technical expertise and ability to
communicate plainly and directly were key factors in Eurocopter winning contracts to supply helicopters to the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff ’s Department, the California Highway Patrol and the Texas Department of Public Safety. Within a three-year period, Eurocopter became the industry sales leader in providing law enforcement and air medical helicopters to government agencies. “We won because we had the best product on the market. And we still do,” he says. “I just helped explain why that was so.” This won him the attention of Serge Panbiere,
American Eurocopter’s chief operating officer at the time. Pence was promoted to director of helicopter completions in 2002. In 2003, new American Eurocopter CEO Marc Paganini gave Pence additional responsibility for all of the company’s MRO work.
01.02 2014
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