The aircraft Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility owned by Ethiopian Airlines has been adjudged the best in Africa.
The facility enjoys the approval of European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the International Air Transport Association (IATA), most Civil Aviation Authorities (CAA) of many countries in the world and also the certification of top aircraft manufacturing companies, including Boeing, Airbus and Bombardier.
This was disclosed by the acting General Manager, MRO Sales and Marketing, Mr. Henok Haile who said besides maintaining most of its 127 fleet, the facility conducts checks for airlines from many other countries up to D-check.
It has the certification to maintain most Boeing aircraft types, including Boeing 737 classics and Next Generation fleet, Boeing B767, 757, 777 and others. It also conducts checks on Bombardier Dash 8 and also advancing in maintaining Airbus aircraft types.
“We conduct checks on almost all aircraft in our fleet and we have B777 and A350 aircraft. We also have B737 and B787 hangar. We also have a paint hangar. We paint aircraft here, as you can see, there is an Arikaircraft that is being painted currently.
“We have capability of repairing airframe, engine and components of the aircraft. We repair Bombardier Q400, Boeing 777, 787, A350, We have base maintenance and line maintenance capability. For the engine, we have engine used for B787 and B737, we have an overall capability for these aircraft. We also have an overall capability for Q400. We have an overall capability for GTCP 131 and 331. On the component side, we have more than 200 components.
We have a repair and overall capacity in our MRO. Our MRO is approved by IATA, and our local civil aviation. We have approval from different Africa regulatory body, Middle East, Europe and America. We can perform any maintenance on our facility. We perform maintenance for Arik Air. We have the capability.”
He said that Ethiopian MRO conducts checks on third party aircraft; that is, the ones owned by other airlines from different parts of the world.
“We have a lot. As you can see in that hangar, we are maintaining the B777 aircraft of Saudi, we have an Arik. We have a lot of aircraft from other countries that are maintained in our facility. We currently have Tag Angola aircraft and Cameroon’s national carrier aircraft. Camair-Co in our hangar. We also performed a C-check on the aircraft.”
“We have Nigerian airlines bringing their aircraft for maintenance in our facility. We had maintained Medviewaircraft. We are still receiving orders and in the process to maintain more airlines from Nigeria and other countries. So we are working.”
On the impact of COVID-19 on Ethiopian MRO operations, Haile said it affected all the business sectors, noting that most customers are unable to come to the MRO facility because of the lockdown in various countries.
“We were working through the situation. We had aircraft in the hangar for maintenance before the lockdown. We did not face any delays. We have creative management systems. So, what we did was that we received aircraft, maintained it and sent it back by using different mechanism but the pandemic affected our business. We are the first choice for maintenance of African airlines. We are Africans, we have to grow one another and support each other. Ethiopian Airlines is the pride of Africa. So every African carrier should come to Ethiopia,” he said.
