ST Engineering and Airbus joint venture Elbe Flugzeugwerke (EFW) are re-entering the Airbus A380 heavy maintenance market, after securing a “multi-million euro” contract with UK long-haul startup Global Airlines and signing firm contracts for 2025 with several other unnamed airlines.
EFW originally began supporting the A380 in 2013, performing around 50 heavy maintenance work packages in Dresden for customers including Air France, Emirates, Lufthansa and Qantas, and later extending its offering to include full cabin modifications. However, this came to an abrupt halt with the pandemic.
Most of the world’s A380 fleet was grounded during the pandemic, and airlines were slow to return the type to their fleets. Meanwhile, demand for passenger to freighter (P2F) conversions skyrocketed during the pandemic, so EFW shifted its focus to increasing P2F production across eight sites worldwide.
“Now the P2F is ramped-up and running. Demand has normalized for A330P2F, and demand for A380 MRO and heavy MRO has increased a lot,” an EFW spokesperson said. “Airbus and Boeing cannot produce enough large passenger aircraft, so capacity is limited, giving the A380 many years of usage and creating a need for MRO.”
Global Airlines is planning to launch operations in by June 2025 and its first aircraft, registered 9H-GLOBL (MSN120), will be ferried to Dresden over the coming weeks. The airframe service will last several weeks, including thorough systems checks, encompassing landing gears and flight controls, along with any repairs.
“We are well prepared and have all the resources in place,” the spokesperson said.
Under the contract, EFW will perform Global Airlines’ heavy airframe maintenance, along with all the airline’s scheduled maintenance, mandatory inspections and component replacements.
Once the airframe maintenance has been completed, 9H-GLOBL will be ferried across Europe for what Global Airlines describes as an “extensive” cabin refurbishment.
Beyond Global Airlines, EFW said other A380 operators have requested support. “Several other firm contracts for 2025 are in place, but the customers cannot be named yet,” the EFW spokesperson said.
