Page 27 - AAA JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2019 Online Magazine

[ MAINTENANCE REPAIR OVERHAUL ]
aircraft. With the latest firm order, IndiGo has A Clear Opportunity
ordered a total of 530 A320 airplanes, of which At present, India has a relatively younger fleet of aircraft, with an
100 units have been delivered by the European average age of about five to seven years, resulting in limited heavy
airframer so far. “Airbus is exploring the pos- maintenance requirements. Going forward, as the fleet ages, the
sibilities of establishing an MRO unit in India,” requirements for advanced checks are bound to increase. But
Dwarakanath Srinivasan, Managing Director of it’s a sad story that despite the steady growth, the country has
Airbus India says. limited resources to cater to the increasing demand and most of
the players in the aviation sector rely on MROs abroad for main-
Airbus currently has a market share of about tenance and repair. Indian MROs are mainly equipped for Line
70 per cent in India and more than 500 air- maintenance. “We need to build more sophisticated facilities and
craft are yet to be delivered to local airlines. upskill our workforce to do the heavy maintenance work which is
“An MRO facility to cater to our aircraft will be mostly outsourced now,” says Dubey.
in our interest. We are talking to our partners
and other companies,” the Airbus official says There are currently around 40 overseas MRO providers approved
without elaborating on the timeline or the pos- by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to conduct
sible partner for the facility. Currently, Airbus work on Indian registered aircraft, in locations such as the U.K.,
has tied up with AirWorks of India to service Germany, France, Romania, Jordan, Israel, the UAE, Sri Lanka,
few of its airplanes that are flown by the new China, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia. “Almost 90 per cent of the
full-service Indian airline Vistara. MRO jobs of Indian carriers go outside of India due to inadequate
arrangement, lack of infrastructure and cumbersome regulatory
Capability Delivered policies in India,” says Dubey. The federal government seems to
Airbus rival and U.S.-based aircraft maker have taken note of this and has finally realized the potential of this
Boeing Co recently handed over to Air India an industry. The Ministry of Civil Aviation has formulated an ambitious
MRO facility in western India town of Nagpur,
which it had built as part of its offset commit-
ments for airplanes bought by the national
carrier. The facility has two 100x100 metre
hangars, to accommodate wide-body aircraft
like Boeing 777s and 747-800s and another
24,000 square meters area for the allied
Jay Menon work. Each of the two hangars can house
four wide-bodied aircraft and six narrow-bod-
ied aircraft at a time. This greenfield Nagpur
facility is Boeing’s second in the world after
Shanghai outside the U.S. and features solar
power facility, natural lighting system and a rain
water harvesting system.

Air India currently has 102 aircraft in its fleet,
consisting of 38 Boeing and 62 Airbus aircraft.
The MRO facility will offer A-checks (sched-
uled maintenance checks performed every
125 flight hours), B-checks (detailed check on
components and systems performed every
4-6 months) and C-checks (extensive check
of individual systems and components for ser-
viceability and function conducted every 20-24
months) for an aircraft. The original agreement
was for Boeing to set up and operate the MRO
for Air India, but it will now be operated by Air
India alone. “We have now nothing to do with
the MRO facility at Nagpur as we have handed
over the facility to Air India under the 2005
agreement. The aviation regulator DGCA has
also given its approvals to the facility,” Boeing
senior vice-president for sales (commercial
airplanes) for Asia-Pacific & India Dinesh. A.
Keskar says.

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