A $70 million joint-venture maintenance, repair and overhaul facility recently completed at the Hyderabad International Airport will be operational in November.
MAS-GMR Aerospace Engineering is a joint venture of Malaysian Aerospace Engineering Sdn. Bhd, a subsidiary of Malaysian Airline System (MAS), and GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd., a subsidiary of GMR infrastructure Ltd. in India.
“MGAE has obtained all the necessary statutory approvals besides key in-principle commitments from its potential customers and is expecting to be in operation beginning Nov. 1 this year,” CEO R.V. Sheshan tells Aviation Week. He did not elaborate on the identity of the potential customers.
Earlier this month, India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation completed an audit of the MRO center. The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) will audit the facility in November.
“If it meets EASA’s standards, it will be able to attract European-registered aircraft for MRO services,” Malaysian Airlines says.
The partners also say the joint-venture MRO will be the “first of its kind of its scale, located in the special economic zone at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad.”
The facility has one widebody hangar, one narrowbody hangar with three bays, and another for aircraft painting with associated workshops.
Because of its strategic location close to the cities of New Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai, the center is expected to help make the Hyderabad airport an integrated aviation facility for its business partners.
“MGAE can provide maintenance services to five aircraft simultaneously with wide- and narrowbody aircraft configuration. These hangars are backed up with the necessary workshops to handle aircraft maintenance, painting, avionics upgrades, interior refurbishment, structural repairs, component replacements, etc,” Sheshan says.
Currently, MGAE has nearly 350 employees, mostly local skilled workers, but also retired engineers and technicians from Malaysian Airlines. In addition, Malaysian Aerospace Engineering has trained 72 Indian engineers hired by MGAE.
Demand for MRO services in Asia has been rising because of growing fleet sizes and lower costs than can be found in the European Union and North America.
Source:Flightglobal
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