Page 7 - AAA SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2014 Online Magazine

SPECIAL FEATURE MRO TRENDS

MRO providers worldwide are finding annually to absorb the backlogs and
themselves under increasing pressure to near-term production rates that the
introduce new means designed to meet manufacturers have lined up. However,
the demand for appropriate support of the recently the widespread traffic growth has
rapidly growing global fleet. in fact been helping to cut into the parked
“While new generation aircraft and fleet instead.
lower labour costs will produce a decline According to IATA, a steady rise in air
in MRO unit costs, these advantages will travel demand has resulted in more and
be offset by regional jet expansion and more operators pulling aircraft out of
the advent of higher thrust engines that storage, particularly current generation
require exotic alloys, single crystal casting narrow bodies with a decade or more of
configurations and more difficult repair life left. This has resulted in reducing the
techniques,” says an executive brief by number of parked fleet .
Siemens PLM Software. “The reductions in parked fleet are driven
Commercial aviation is expected to largely by returns to service of A320 and 737NG
face MRO costs that will grow up to over family models. In particular, the number of
$62.5 billion by 2017 from about $50 parked A320s recently fell 22% year-over-
billion in 2012. Faced with heavy capital year, to 159 aircraft, while the parked 737NG
investment and a cash-flow sensitive fleet declined 7%, to 65 aircraft. And there are
business, commercial operators have few reasons to believe the trend will continue,” says
alternatives other than trying to control Kestutis Volungevicius, the Head of FL Technics
their MRO expenditures. Training. “However, the big question is, whether
“For global commercial aviation the existing workforce supply is sufficient to
operators, the goal is to control their handle such increasing work volumes.”
operating costs across a “complete Due to rapidly increasing demand for
business cycle” that includes both good heavy maintenance of popular narrow
and bad economic fluctuations,” says the bodies, the MRO industry is equivocal about
brief by Siemens PLM Software. the actual capacity it can offer, especially
Currently the order backlogs of the as concerns adequate supply of qualified
two major OEMs, Boeing and Airbus, are workforce to handle the work. Between
at record 5,100 and 5,500 respectively. 2002 and 2013 there was significant
With this in regard, the global fleet is expansion of the fleets, especially in the
expected to shed 4-5% of its airframes developing world, and these aircraft are

Many airlines are
becoming increasingly
reluctant to purchase
spare sets, preferring to
rely on pool items and
short-term leases
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