Hong Kong-based startup Greater Bay Airlines (GBA) is building up MRO capabilities for its operations, which it expects to launch in early 2022.

This week, it chose China Aircraft Services Limited (CASL) as its line maintenance and ground handling services provider at Hong Kong International Airport. Under the partnership, CASL will provide 24/7 line maintenance support, including transit services and scheduled checks, as well as ground support equipment services. It will also provide riding engineer services to GBA to release aircraft into service. According to GBA CEO Algernon Yau, CASL will support the airline’s rapid implementation requirements and growth.

GBA received its Air Operator’s Certificate on Oct. 8 following its formation in 2020. It currently has three leased Boeing 737-800 aircraft and aims to have seven aircraft by the end of 2022. It plans to grow to 30 aircraft by 2026. GBA plans to fly to 104 destinations across the Asia-Pacific region, including China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

During its process of seeking its Air Operator’s Certificate, GBA also signed onto two software solutions to manage and digitalize maintenance operations. It signed a five-year deal with flydocs in March to automate and digitize its aircraft records from day one. It is also using Swiss-AS MRO software to initiate its operation and support the gradual growth of its activities.

According to Swiss-AS, its AMOS APAC office in Singapore has been providing resources and support to GBA since mid-March to initially implement airworthiness relevant and material management processes. It went live with the software in September.

“Notwithstanding the smallness of the team, GBA managed—in a record time of three months—to get the approval from their local authority regarding all airworthiness processes, leveraging the AMOS standard business processes,” says Pierluigi Calu, head of AMOS Asia-Pacific.

GBA has also selected flydocs parent company Lufthansa Technik (LHT) to provide continuing airworthiness management (CAMO) services. LHT says it will be sharing more details soon.