Daily Memo: A Renewed Look At The Top MRO Providers Illustrates Shifting Landscape
After a five-year hiatus, Aviation Week Network’s MRO team has brought back one of its most popular and insightful features: its top 10 survey.
Input from participating aftermarket providers—about 70 in all this time around—helps the editorial team assemble a top 10 list ranked by airframe overhaul hours spent on third-party customers. Of even greater interest are the observations gleaned from the survey itself.
The 2024 edition—available in the current issue of Inside MRO and online—is especially intriguing because it offers a snapshot of how market forces have changed since the downturn—and how aftermarket providers are responding.
Not surprisingly, a lack of capacity is the most commonly cited headwind. This stems from a combination of catch-up work delayed due to the downturn and the now-familiar issue of too few new deliveries compared to what fleet planners were expecting. Older airframes are filling in, leading to life extensions for some active aircraft and more extensive return-to-service packages for others being reactivated from long-term storage.
How are shops addressing it? Building more space is the obvious answer. But the equation for justifying a bigger operation extends beyond demand into another lingering challenge: labor.
Having access to talent is one of the three pillars MRO provider AAR must have to open a new airframe facility. The others: a customer commitment and a collaborative relationship with the airport. Recent expansions in Miami and Oklahoma City follow this plan.
Many facilities are looking inward to boost capacity. Getting aircraft and engines through shops sooner can mean more work is done with the same number of people in the same footprint. Reducing the ramifications of non-routine items and ensuring spare parts are available when they’re needed—particularly in the engine overhaul world—are among the more promising strategies in play.
Joint ventures remain popular, particularly among component services providers—again, no surprise. Partnering with shops in other regions can expand capacity and customer reach without building anything or hiring anyone.
Sustainability is beginning to influence the MRO sector as well. New hangars are popping up in traditionally high labor-cost locations such as Western Europe and the U.S. due in part to customers’ desires to keep equipment closer to home and minimize the environmental impact of a maintenance visit.
The 2024 Top 10 MRO survey is full of such insight.
A look back at the original one from 2001 shows how much the MRO world has changed. Back then, Aviation Week’s flagship aftermarket publication wasn’t called Inside MRO.
And that first survey’s top two facilities? Neither one is a stand-alone entity today.
