AAR’s Purchase of MRO Holdings Vaults Airframe MRO Into New Discussion

Component repair capacity and turnaround times have arguably become the second-hottest aftermarket topic after engine MRO. Both component and engine MRO generate high margins, but shop times are still too long due to continuing supply chain problems and strong demand.

So it is interesting that airframe MRO leapt into the spotlight on Sept. 28 after the stock market closed, thanks to AAR Corp.’s announcement that it will acquire 65% of privately held MRO Holdings for $1.7 billion. AAR has the option to acquire the remaining 35% over the next four years, and Chairman, President and CEO John Holmes says, “We fully intend to.”

Acquiring blue-chip MRO Holdings will grow AAR’s aircraft maintenance footprint to 12 facilities from seven, expand its maintenance lines to 189 from 74, increase its maintenance service hours to 19 million from 7 million and catapult the number of aircraft serviced annually to 3,000 from about 1,200.

That 3,000-aircraft figure is important for a few reasons:

• First, it provides a bigger base from which to leverage the three business areas that AAR has been expanding: parts distribution, repair and software.
• Second, that scale should give the company buying power and additional clout with OEMs and vendors, which in turn should help customers.
• Third, that larger, combined platform spread across five countries should give customers more flexibility and one-stop capabilities—especially since AAR gained FAA Organization Designation Authorization approval through its acquisition of Aircraft Reconfig Technologies this year.

“Having this scale, now the largest in the world, just really accelerates all of the things we’re doing,” Holmes told me on Sept. 28, shortly after the announcement.

Privately held MRO Holdings operates 115 lines of maintenance across Aeroman in El Salvador, TechOps MX in Mexico, Rionegro in Colombia and Flightstar and North State in the U.S. MRO Holdings’ widebody capability opens that market for AAR.

“We definitely see an opportunity to attract widebody work, and we know that a number of larger airlines want to bring that work back to this side of the world” from Asia, Holmes says. He also sees an opportunity to win narrowbody work from European carriers in its U.S. sites or MRO Holdings’ facilities, “so this gives us a lot more flexibility,” he adds.

This is AAR’s seventh acquisition in four years. Similar to Trax, with which Holmes says they were in discussions for 10 years before acquiring in 2023, AAR was talking with MRO Holdings Chairman Roberto Kriete and his shareholders for eight years before this deal was finalized.

Holmes joined AAR in 2001 as its director of mergers and acquisitions, before becoming CEO in 2018 and chairman in 2023. He is definitely playing the long game, and given the spate of acquisitions the last few years (2023: Trax; 2024: Triumph Group’s product support; 2025: Aerostrat, American Distributors, HAECO Americas; 2026: Aircraft Reconfig Technologies, MRO Holdings), it will be interesting to see what comes next.