Situated in Ajax, east of Toronto, this 19,000m2 facility employs approximately 500 people.
Like its sister facilities in France and the UK, Messier-Dowty Toronto has been manufacturing landing gear for over 50 years. Activities include a total capability from concept to in-service support including design, development, test, manufacture, assembly, sales, marketing and product support.
Core competencies at Toronto include the design and development of fully integrated landing gear systems that comprise not only the traditional main and nose landing gear components, but ancillary systems such as steering control, landing gear control & indication, emergency control, brake control, wheels, brakes, tires, door mechanisms and electrical harnesses. The manufacture of critical landing gear components remains one of Toronto’s principal activities and the facility also has a state-of-the-art final assembly area where landing gear systems for a variety of aircraft programs are fully assembled and tested prior to delivery to the customer.
Programs include Bell/Agusta BA609, Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey, Boeing F/A-18 E/F, Bombardier’s Global and Challenger families, the CRJ 200 and Dash 8 Q100, Q200 & Q300, Dassault Falcon 7X and Raytheon 800 XP and Hawker 4000.
The development and certification test facilities at the Toronto facility include a 32 channel MTS Aero 90LT load control system, four 8 channel MTS Teststart IIm load control systems, and two MTS Teststar IIs single channel load controllers. The test facility operates a scalable data acquisition system based on commercial off the shelf signal conditioning and data acquisition products produced by National Instruments and integrated by custom data acquisition and processing software written in the LabVIEW language. 10 independent data acquisition stations are available with a combined channel count of 200 channels of data acquisition. Each station can provide up to 48 channels of data acquisition per station. An additional 100 channel System 5000 strain gauge data acquisition system is available for static testing.
Facilities are available for temperature and icing tests. Strength, fatigue, endurance, system integration, and drop testing are all performed at the Toronto site. The department operates two dynamic drop test towers with capacities to 100,000 [lb] drop weight.
Comprehensive rig design capability, state of the art test systems, and skilled test personnel result in efficient and cost effective certification testing to international requirements. Testing is routinely performed to meet US Federal Aviation Regulation (FAR), European Joint Airworthiness Regulations (JAR), and Canadian Aviation Regulations (CAR). Testing is also performed to meet US Navy and military standards.
Quality Assurance :
Quality Assurance and reliability functions are performed in accordance with Canadian and US military and commercial standards meeting Department of National Defense, ISO 9000, Department of Transport and Civil Aviation Authority requirements. A DND Quality Assurance Detachment is resident at the Toronto facility. Messier-Dowty Inc. received Boeing D1-9000 certification in April 1995; Department of Transport Chapter 561 for Manufacturing; 573 for Maintenance and Repair and Overhaul, and is a JAA (Joint Aviation Authority) accepted, Transport Canada-approved AMO (Aircraft Maintenance Organization).
