ATLANTA—MHIRJ has added mobile-repair capability for the Airbus A220—the first step in a ramp-up that the company envisions leading to full airframe heavy maintenance work in 2024 as it expands its services portfolio beyond legacy regional aircraft platforms.
Adding the A220 “allows us to continue to grow the business beyond the base,” Ross Mitchell, VP of strategy, business development, marketing, communications and business operations, told Aviation Week at MRO Americas. “The base of the business was the CRJ. We’re moving beyond the CRJ, and the A220 is beyond the regional space, which is quite important to us as we move forward.”
The company, which took over CRJ aftermarket support when parent Mitsubishi Heavy Industries bought Bombardier’s regional jet program in 2020, has largely focused on supporting the legacy regional jets. Demand for the work is strong, but with the CRJ long out of production, the fleet is not growing, and airlines have been parking one-class, 50-seat variants.
In response, MHIRJ has been diversifying its offerings. Its components business is taking off. It now has two customers for Embraer ERJ-145 heavy maintenance, including a just-announced three-year deal with Piedmont Airlines. The first Piedmont aircraft will be inducted in May in MHIRJ’s 17-line Bridgeport, West Virginia, facility.
If all goes as planned, Bridgeport will begin welcoming A220s for unscheduled airframe work by the end of 2023, said SVP and head of aftermarket Ismail Mokabel. Then, in 2024, scheduled A220 checks would start.
“We start with a mobile repair team where the customer need is now, supporting the fleet that is flying today,” Mokabel said. “Then by the end of this year, we should be supporting unscheduled events in our shops, and then our aspiration is to be a heavy maintenance, fully spooled up organization.”
Like its legacy Bombardier and Embraer regional airframe business, the A220 airframe offering will target North American operators. It also could be a hint of what is to come as MHIRJ broadens its aftermarket capabilities. Larger platforms are among the possibilities, as both Bridgeport and the company’s 13-line Tucson, Arizona, shop can accommodate airframes larger than the A220.
“In 10 years, we’d like to be known as an aftermarket services company, and not the CRJ company,” Mitchell said.
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