NORDAM CEO Meredith Siegfried Madden announced the aerospace company has been awarded an Airbus contract to manufacture a lightweight composite part that supports the A350-1000 aircraft's cargo floor. The new contract represents NORDAM's first provision of a structural component for Airbus.

NORDAM's Interiors & Structures Division, 6910 N. Whirlpool Dr., fabricates the part – known as a 'crutch' – from HexMC©, a proprietary Hexcel product that transforms AS4 carbon fiber strips into a randomly-oriented mat, which then can be cut and compression-molded into complex geometries. The Tulsa-based company is one of only two licensed molders of this unique material worldwide.

“We have 47 years of composites expertise and are eager to utilize that in support of this valued, long-time NORDAM customer for the first time,” Siegfried said.

The first A350-1000 started final assembly process in Toulouse earlier this year; NORDAM crutch program has been ramping up since 2015 with more than 1,000 parts already completed to date. Under the terms of the crutch supply agreement, full production volume will entail manufacture of more than 1,500 crutches per year over the life of the program. No additional NORDAM personnel or equipment are needed to fulfil this production commitment.

The new contract is just one recent Airbus win for NORDAM, including last year's naming of the Repair Division as the first supplier in the Americas qualified by Airbus to replace skin panels and perform beyond-the-manual repairs to A320ceo and A320neo; and expansion of its structural-component repair agreement with Airbus Materials & Logistics Management, empowering NORDAM to support repair of proprietary A320 flight-control surfaces for Airbus operators across the Americas.

Likewise, NORDAM manufactures a mix of cabin windows, landing-light and wing-tip lenses for various Airbus aircraft, including the A320, A350 and A380. The company even hosted Airbus representatives as guests of honor for “Airbus Day” at its Transparency facility in 2015, featuring a celebration marking that division's production of the 100,000th A320 cabin window.