Bombardier uses Salesforce Service Cloud and Field Service to speed repairs of grounded aircraft

Bombardier, the Canadian company that designs, manufactures and services premium business jets for corporate and government customers, has connected its aircraft-on-ground (AOG) response using Salesforce Service Cloud and Field Service and Operations. Customers expect a grounded aircraft to be back in the air within 24 hours, and service is Bombardier's most profitable business segment.

Before the change, maintenance records could span multiple hangars, so dispatchers sometimes had to coordinate a response without a complete service history. That slowed both diagnosis and resolution.

In the current workflow, the Customer Response Center logs and routes AOG cases in Service Cloud. When field support is needed away from a Bombardier hangar, the case moves to the Maintenance Command Center, where a person confirms technician availability and contacts the customer before dispatch, preserving the approval process required by aviation regulations. Field Service then helps identify a technician with the right skills and certifications, locate parts and specialized tools, and arrange travel, including a chartered flight when needed, so technicians arrive with a service plan.

Andre Poulin, Customer Response Center Director, said retrieving similar past cases gives agents a starting point for building a more effective troubleshooting plan. Scheduling tools match work to technicians by skills, availability, location and travel time, and technicians can use the Salesforce Field Service app to access work orders, update jobs, track parts and communicate with dispatchers.

Bombardier plans to connect contact center agents to Data 360 and internal knowledge for AI-assisted diagnostics at case intake. That work could draw on the same 500-plus technical documents from Salesforce and SharePoint already used to ground its agentic sales engineer, Clara.

Bombardier cited Salesforce's unified CRM architecture, an extensible service platform, and a zero data retention commitment as its reasons for choosing the platform.

A grounded business jet is a customer-facing failure measured in hours, and a 24-hour expectation leaves little room for time spent searching for records, qualified technicians or parts. In that setting, the speed of an AOG response depends as much on information flow and dispatch logistics as on the repair work itself. This case shows an OEM treating that coordination layer as part of the product it sells in the aftermarket.

The workflow also shows where automation stops. Dispatch scheduling and case retrieval are systematised, while the Maintenance Command Center keeps a person in the loop to confirm technician availability and contact the customer, because aviation regulations require that approval step. Any operator or MRO adopting similar tooling faces the same boundary between what software can route and what a person must sign off.

The pending milestone is the AI-assisted diagnostics layer at case intake. Whether it shortens diagnosis will be visible in the same measure customers already apply, the time from grounding to return to service.