This article is published in Aviation Week & Space Technology and is free to read until Jul 25, 2024. If you want to read more articles from this publication, please click the link to subscribe.
AirBaltic is building two temporary hangars in Riga to meet growing demand for A220 maintenance.
AirBaltic CEO Martin Gauss discusses the Riga, Latvia-based airline’s Airbus A220-300 maintenance and its Pratt & Whitney engine experience. Interview by Kurt Hofmann.
Gauss will also be among the high-profile speakers taking part in MRO BEER on 26-27 June in Vilnius, Lithuania, the region's premier MRO conference and exhibition.
AirBaltic is the world’s largest Airbus A220-300 operator. What has your experience been so far with implementing heavy maintenance for this aircraft type? The A220 does not have a classical D check; it has C1 and C2 checks that are conducted after three years. We have done several C2 checks, the interval of which is at year six. Five are done, and three are ongoing. We have performed 27 C checks in total here in Riga, and we learned a lot. The aircraft is new, but we have the most experience in A220-300 heavy maintenance because we became the first airline to do it. The other [MRO] providers that provide such checks are SAMCO in the Netherlands and Austrian [Airlines] Technik Bratislava. We have also done some work for Air Austral, but we have not done a C check for anybody else because we don’t have the hangar capacity.
Does this mean you will have to expand your MRO infrastructure? Our biggest issue is hangar capacity. We now have seven maintenance lines-—four for line maintenance and three for base maintenance. We have four of our own lines, and we rent three from two MROs located at Riga Airport. However, that is still not enough for our 47 aircraft. This year, we started to build a hangar with eight lines for A220 maintenance. It will be the largest hangar in the Baltic states at 43,000 m2 (463,000 ft.2). It will be a high-double-digit-million euro investment. We may continue to use three hangars that we currently use for our maintenance because the new one will not be enough for our 50-plus aircraft as well as space for third-party maintenance. Because we plan to grow to 100 aircraft and offer third-party business, we are in the process of building two temporary hangars in between.
Will third-party A220 business also be important for you? Depending on capacity, we will offer it. I am sure we have the most A220 experience in the industry because we are the largest A220-300 operator in the world right now. Other airlines that are starting to operate the A220 will only come to it over some years, and they will probably get to that maintenance level as well.
How are you working with the OEMs when it comes to developing your A220 MRO expertise? We work very closely with Airbus and Satair on our C check maintenance findings, parts and engineering support. Based on our findings, Airbus has introduced some modifications and additional inspections over the last six years. It is not the same aircraft compared to what was first delivered. We had to develop our own shops—such as sheet metal, composites, emergency equipment, seats, wheels and galley components—for line and base and maintenance activities. We built all the technical expertise we didn’t have over the last six years. We work with Riga Technical University, and we have our own technical academy to develop a workforce for our growing fleet. We have big demand on maintenance personnel in the near future, so we do recruitment for the academy similar to what large MRO companies are doing. We do not perform major engine maintenance, but we do have a small engine shop where we can do quick engine change installations and some minor modifications. We are interested in doing engine maintenance in the future, maybe in the next 5-10 years. Pratt & Whitney has to do a lot right now to fix engine issues.
How is the situation with the Pratt & Whitney PW1500G engine? It gradually improved after some mods incorporation and operational recommendations. The biggest issue we have is we get an engine forecast [from Pratt & Whitney] about how many engines will be missing in a one-year span. Because the engines don’t stay on the wing too long, it is very important to have it be precise due to network planning purposes. At the moment, this forecast is not precise and should be improved. In the beginning, some of the engines [were on wing] a couple hundred hours/cycles, but now they are reaching around 4,000/2,500 hours/cycles on wing. Ideally, the engine doesn’t come off the wing that often for maintenance. Unfortunately, all these new engines have the same issue.
What challenges are you experiencing with regard to engine shortages? In 2022, we had four missing engines, which was no problem. Then we were totally surprised by what happened to us in the beginning of 2023 because the forecast we had from Pratt & Whitney was five engines, but in reality, 26 engines were missing. That’s why we had to wet lease 11 aircraft to cover our operations, because at the same time we wet-leased out our aircraft based on our long-term contracts. We had a major hit from the public because of this. It was announced to us [by Pratt] only weeks before the summer started. It cost us a fortune to take in aircraft short-term.
What about compensation? There is compensation for not having a working engine, but there is no compensation for lost profits and trouble with customers. This year, we are now in a situation where we have no missing engines [as of February]. But because of the cycling and the lifetime limitations of certain parts, we know when we have to take engines off and send them to the shop. Currently, we have 10 engines sitting in the hangar waiting for an MRO slot, which leads to a situation where we will have 17 missing engines by September and 25 engines that will not be available at the end of the summer. What we do all the time, when an aircraft is in heavy maintenance on a C check, is take the engine off and put it on another aircraft. Six to eight or maybe 10 aircraft will not fly. But that also means aircraft that would not fly anyway because they are in heavy maintenance. As the fleet is growing, you always have an aircraft in maintenance.
How is your relationship with Pratt & Whitney? We have a very good relationship with the leadership team. The situation for our company was very bad last year. We are still negotiating every week. The situation has improved, but it is not where it should be. The problem is a supply chain issue, which is a global issue. Then there is a labor issue and a capacity issue. Pratt’s capacity issue is an underestimation, where they are really guilty. They are not providing a proper guidance, and that is a Pratt problem. I’m not complaining about Pratt because we have to live with that situation, but they should spend much more to fix the problem. And that’s where we put pressure on, because we say to them, “You are not good enough yet.”
Do you have spare engines? We own seven spare engines. We own all our engines in the form of our lease contracts if the aircraft is not our own. And we have a lot of leased engines. We cannot add additional leased engines because there are no leased engines available. Once, we had an engine for 398 days in the shop because there were no spare parts available. Normally, you get an engine back after 90-120 days.
AirBaltic Fact File
Headquarters: Riga, Latvia.
Hubs: Riga; Vilnius, Lithuania; Tampere, Finland; Gran Canaria, Spain.
History: AirBaltic commenced operations in 1995 following the signing of a joint venture between the government of Latvia and Scandinavian Airlines (SAS). Saab 340s were the first aircraft operated by the airline and were later replaced by Fokker 50s. Eventually, AirBaltic started operating Boeing aircraft and leased De Havilland Canada Dash 8-400s, which it finally retired in 2023. The ownership structure of the company has changed over several years. In the late 1990s, it became a limited stock company. In 2009, SAS sold off its stake. In 2022, the airline began wet-leasing Airbus A220s to other operators, including Swiss. In 2024, it is majority-owned by the government of Latvia.
Fleet: The airline was one of the launch customers for the Bombardier C Series in 2015, which was later rebranded to the Airbus A220 program, so the fleet consists entirely of A220-300 aircraft. AirBaltic operates 47 of the type and plans to have 50 in its fleet this year. The carrier plans to double its fleet size to more than 100 A220-300s by 2030.
