HAECO Doubles Down On Chinese MRO Investments

BEIJING—HAECO Group is positioning itself to dominate in China’s accelerating MRO market through new customer deals, facilities and capabilities. The company signed three maintenance agreements and announced several new capability milestones at MRO Greater China last week. On the sidelines of the event, Chief Commercial Officer Gerald Steinhoff spoke with Aviation Week about the company’s road map for growth in China and the greater Asia-Pacific region.

“We decided a few years ago to focus our investments in the Chinese mainland, Asia-Pacific and Middle East. This will continue, and I feel that we are well-suited here,” said Steinhoff, noting that he believes China and its airlines have “a very prosperous growth path ahead of them,” with a market that “has some exceptions and some USPs [unique selling points].”

While the narrowbody market will generate much of China’s future MRO demand, Steinhoff noted that the Boeing 777 market there is also strong, with freighter revenues stable and growing. At MRO Greater China, HAECO signed memoranda of understanding with China and Hong Kong-based cargo carriers Central Airlines and Fly Meta Group focused on freighter MRO. HAECO plans to work with both airlines to develop maintenance capabilities for 777 freighters and the GE90 engines that power them. HAECO will also support Fly Meta’s 747 freighters.

Additionally, HAECO extended its radome repair agreement with Airbus for multiple years. Its HAECO Composite Services subsidiary in Jinjiang has been the OEM’s approved radome maintenance provider in the Chinese mainland since 2016.

“Many OEMs are currently very interested in working together with us because they want to have that access to the Chinese mainland,” Steinhoff said. “They want to be in China with a trusted partner, and I feel we have a certain USP compared to other MROs,” he added, noting that HAECO’s Swire Group ownership is “a unique bridge between the cultures and economic systems.”

For instance, HAECO announced during the event that it had completed its first landing gear overhaul for the Comac C909 at HAECO Landing Gear Services in Xiamen through its partnership with Liebherr-Aerospace. Steinhoff said HAECO also has a collaboration with Comac, and he expects the C909 to “play a major role” in the coming decades.

HAECO also announced during MRO Greater China that it had successfully completed and delivered its first GE Aerospace CF34-10A engine. HAECO Engine Services (HES) in Xiamen is the only GE Branded Services Agreement holder for the engine type in the greater China region. HES is also constructing a new facility in Xiamen to support overhaul, testing and repair of engines such as the GE90, CF34-10A, GE9X and Engine Alliance GP7200. It is scheduled to open by the fourth quarter.

Steinhoff said HAECO is working to develop capabilities on the CFM International Leap engine, citing Aviation Week’s 2026 Commercial Fleet & MRO Forecast that shows “exploding” demand for the engine type over the next decade. He said this demand is similar in the Chinese mainland market. “They have a need for Leap shops here,” Steinhoff said. “We have proof that we can do this on other engines, and I’m pretty sure that in the next [few] years, we’re going to come up with some good news on that.”

On the airframe side, HAECO is significantly scaling up its hangar capacity in the Asia-Pacific. The company is building what it claims will be the world’s largest single-span aircraft maintenance hangar at Xiamen Xiang’an International Airport, which will have 12 widebody and six narrowbody maintenance bays, as well as two separate painting bays. Steinhoff expects the facility to open in January.

Simultaneously, HAECO is building a new maintenance facility at Van Don International Airport in Vietnam that will add four lines for widebody and heavy maintenance. Steinhoff said HAECO is considering another opportunity to further extend narrowbody maintenance capacity in the Asia-Pacific region, but no decisions have been made yet.

One of the major themes at MRO Greater China was the region’s desire to mitigate supply chain challenges by fostering greater collaboration in areas such as aircraft recycling, used serviceable material (USM), and parts manufacturer approval (PMA) parts. Steinhoff said Chinese airlines have traditionally been more conservative when it comes to USM, but he hopes a “wind of change” will happen in the next few years as they face greater cost pressures.

While he noted that HAECO tries to “stay away from PMAs as long as these are critical, high-value parts and safety-related parts, especially engines,” the company is using USM “more and more.” It has also established parts manufacturing capabilities for some smaller interior parts in partnership with OEMs. “I hope this year we’re going to sign one or two big contracts with OEMs from the Americas, for example, to support the Chinese market with parts produced in Xiamen,” Steinhoff said.

He added: “The better we can create in the Chinese mainland an environment where we have parts flow and supply, maybe a little bit more independent from the rest of the world, I think this will help a lot. We try to support that.”