What Will The 2017 Regional MRO Trends Be?

African operators are expected to generate more than $2.5 billion in MRO expenditures in 2017, according to the Aviation Week 2017 Commercial Fleet and MRO Forecast. In December, South African Airways took delivery of the first of five leased Airbus A330-300s and signed a $180 million Trent 700 TotalCare service contract with Rolls-Royce to support the engines. These aircraft are in addition to the six A330s the carrier already operates, the engines of which are covered under a TotalCare agreement.

Asia-Pacific-based operators based will spend about $3 billion on component maintenance in 2017. In December 2016, AFI KLM E&M won a big Airbus A320 component support contract from AirAsia. A week before that, Air France Industries/KLM Engineering & Maintenance opened a materials and logistics center in Kuala Lumpur. AirAsia received its first A320neo in September.

Engine maintenance will generate $1.5-2 billion in 2017. In November, SF Airlines awarded a 10-year contract to Ameco for repair and overhaul of 40 Rolls-Royce RB211 engines that power the carrier’s Boeing 757 fleet.

The retail value of deliveries into this region is expected to reach more than $9 billion by the end of 2017, according to Aviation Week’s 2017 Commercial Fleet and MRO Forecast. Wizz Air, which as of late November operated a fleet of 74 Airbus A320 and A321 aircraft, expanded an existing technical support deal with Lufthansa Technik to include A320ceo/A321ceo (about 90 aircraft) and A321neo (about 110 aircraft) component support, aircraft overhaul and Cyclean engine washes through 2022. Wizz Air also recently chose FlyDocs software for its data and records solution. One advantage is that FlyDocs has advanced interfaces with Swiss-AS’s AMOS MRO software, which Wizz Air also uses.

New aircraft deliveries into India are expected to reach 90 aircraft in 2017, according to Aviation Week fleet data. Air India accepted its 22^nd Boeing 787 in November.

This region is expected to accept more than 100 new aircraft, bringing the total in-service fleet to 2,600-plus in 2017, according to Aviation Week fleet and forecast data. IATA Director-General Alexandre de Juniac is bullish on traffic to the region—he expects it to more than double over the next two decades, as reported in Aviation Daily. Expect growth for low-cost carriers, including Argentinian start-up Flybondi.

Total MRO demand in the Middle East will reach at least $6 billion in 2017, according to Aviation Week’s 2017 Commercial Fleet and MRO Forecast. The region bucks the trend for widebody demand, which is falling in other areas of the world. For instance, Emirates operates an all-Airbus A380 and Boeing 777 fleet.

This region will generate at least $20 billion in civil aviation MRO expenditures in 2017, according to the Aviation Week 2017 Commercial Fleet and MRO Forecast. Expect about 280 aircraft to retire in 2017. On Dec. 15, Marana Aerospace Solutions and Ascent Aviation announced plans to merge. Marana is about 35 mi. away from Ascent, which is located in Tuscon, Arizona. The companies say the merger will enable them to optimize staffing, project planning and turnaround times—as well as expand their aftermarket offerings.

Engine maintenance requirements will generate $5-plus billion in 2017, according to Aviation Week’s 2017 Commercial Fleet and MRO Forecast. MTU Aero Engines CEO Reiner Winkler expects “our highly profitable spare parts and maintenance business to generate the highest increase in revenues as of 2018.”  In other regional engine news, Lufthansa Technik and GE Aviation plan to open a GEnx-2B and GE9X engine service center, XEOS, in Poland in September 2018.