Gallery: Inside Lufthansa Technik Philippines' New MRO Facility

After a delay of nearly two years owing to the COVID-19 influenced slump in global air travel, Lufthansa Technik Philippines opened its new $40 million base maintenance hangar in Pasay Bay last month. The 97,000 ft.² facility, known as Hangar 1A, is based at the MacroAsia Special Economic Zone at Villamor Airbase in Pasay City—close to the capital city of Manila.

Lufthansa Technik Philippines first announced plans to expand in 2019 and held a ground-breaking ceremony in November of that year. The facility was originally scheduled to be completed in September 2020.

LHT Philippine’s new location will replicate another hangar already operating at the site and will service Airbus A320, A330, A380 and Boeing 777 aircraft.

The new hangar will initially service narrowbody aircraft, despite also having capacity for widebodies. “The hangar is big enough to accommodate an A380 or four narrowbodies so we’ve started by servicing narrowbodies, but we will shift the business model if the demand is there. If that happens, the narrowbodies would have to look for a new home," Rainer Janke, vice president of marketing and sales at Lufthansa Philippines recently told Aviation Week.

Once in full operation, the MRO provider estimates an increased capacity of up to 20% and hopes to add up to 275 new staff at the location.

The MRO’s existing customer base includes the likes of flag carrier Philippine Airlines, British Airways, Korean Air, Asiana Airlines and Saudi Arabian Airlines. Its initial recovery began last year when business from European and Middle Eastern airlines started returning. This year, partially due to the lifting of restrictions and increase in air traffic, it has started seeing a recovery in the Asia-Pacific region.

Capacity around Manila is heavily congested and Lufthansa Technik Philippines has admitted that it cannot grow the business any further in the city and its surrounding areas. As a result, it is looking at other sites in the country to expand. These could be in two possible locations: the first at Clark, located around one hour and 30 minutes away from Manila, and the second in Cebu, where the company currently operates a small facility.