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Marc Szepan, general manager of Guangzhou Aircraft Maintenance Engineering Co. (Gameco), a joint venture between China Southern Airlines and Hutchison Whampoa, talked with Executive Editor Lee Ann Shay about business changes and growth.
Gameco operates 35 lines of maintenance. What is your mix of narrowbody versus widebody and work for China Southern versus other carriers?
Many of these lines—31 in Guangzhou and four in Beijing—are flexible. Very roughly speaking, about two-thirds of that business is widebody and one-third is narrowbody. And about -one-third of heavy maintenance is for our shareholder China Southern, and the other two-thirds come from global customers.
The heavy maintenance covers the whole range—from relatively light C1 or C2 checks all the way to the really big checks. Again, it’s a good mix. We are particularly proud that we have had the opportunity to perform the first 12-year check on an Airbus A380 here in China and the first 12-year check on a Boeing 787 performed in China. In terms of the way the mix has been evolving over the past 2-3 years, we used to have quite a bit of work on freighters, but right now the workload has evolved to roughly 80% passenger aircraft and 20% freighters. And out of the 80% passenger aircraft, maintenance is for both widebodies and narrowbodies—almost all of which is from premium global carriers.
What primary interior work are you doing these days, and how is that changing?
There has been quite a bit of a backlog for global premium carriers upgrading their cabins, including inflight connectivity.
What parts still have long lead times?
The challenge is that it is across all kinds of parts—cabin parts, structural parts, standard parts, different types of materials. Because it’s pretty much across the board, that means you have to take a comprehensive approach to managing everything rather than just focusing on a couple of part numbers or a couple of subsystems.
Is that why Gameco signed the integrated material service agreement with Satair recently?
Indeed. In terms of supply chain strategy, it helps with better forecasting tools and provisioning, having a larger buffer stock. We’ve partnered with Satair since November 2022, and we were the first mainland-China-based company that signed an integrated material management contract with Boeing. There are literally thousands and thousands of part numbers that are covered by these partnerships. In addition to better projection, larger provisioning and better partnering is the fourth P: producing. We’ve fairly significantly ramped up our in-house design and production capabilities. We can manufacture more than 24,800 part numbers in-house.
What kind of parts are those, generally?
Pretty much across the board, but a lot of them are cabin, structural, metal composite and plastic [parts manufacturer approval] parts. We also are developing and building our own subsystems or assemblies. For example, fairly recently, we developed Gameco’s first overhead storage bin. We have invested significantly over the past 3.5 years in our design and fabrication production to triple our capabilities. We are really grateful to our partners, especially China Southern, for enabling us to do that.
Speaking of partners, how is China Southern’s Comac C919 performance?
We support both domestically developed jets—the C909 regional jet and the C919 narrowbody. [At] the end of May, we completed the first C check on the C919, of which China Southern currently operates 11. Of course, we also support those on the line every day. Having completed that first C919 C check, that makes us the only MRO worldwide that has performed heavy maintenance across most Airbus, Boeing and Comac product lines—including the A380. We are particularly happy to report that we finished the C check in exactly the number of planned days—and it was a competitive turnaround time.
During last year’s MRO Asia-Pacific conference, you mentioned that Gameco is developing an in-house MRO enterprise resource planning system. What is the status of that?
A couple of years ago, the company made the strategic decision that we want to have our own in-house MRO enterprise resource planning system. The two prime reasons were as follows: We want to be able to adapt as quickly as we need without having to align with an external vendor, and two, as artificial intelligence (AI) tools become more and more mature and find increasing regulatory approval, we want to be able to integrate those into the system at our own speed without having to worry about potentially somewhat slower adaptation from an off-the-shelf system.
The first modules—for line maintenance and heavy maintenance—are in use. The component management module is in its final trial phase, so unless something unexpected comes up, we should have the full system running by the end of the year.
Does Gameco have any other digital transformation or AI projects underway?
There’s quite a number across the enterprise, some of which we are working through the approval processes. We already have in place a blockchain-based electronic task card for signature management and an AI-driven intelligent aircraft jacking and weighing system that we developed in-house. We also have some AI-driven robotic projects underway to optimize our facilities.
Are there any other new capabilities or capacity that we should be talking about?
If you divide the company’s services into three big areas—airframe, components, and parts design and manufacturing—and describe them by flight phases, airframe is pretty much at cruise, but optimized at different flight levels. For components, it’s in the climbing phase. We added Boeing 787-8 landing gear overhaul capability 1.5 years ago, and this year, we’re adding it for 787-9, 737 MAX and Airbus A320neo gears. And we have probably doubled the number of C919 components we can overhaul. The parts design and manufacturing area is kind of in takeoff, so we’ll be adding part numbers and design capabilities.
What is your business outlook, given geopolitical concerns?
Geopolitical realities and volatility, to different extents, will be part of the reality that we have to deal with as an industry. Secondly, I think medium-to-long-term supply chain challenges across various product groups will continue at least for the next couple of years. And factor three, I see long-range growth for aircraft deliveries, so the growth of the global installed fleet will require increased maintenance.
I think the market for widebody heavy maintenance will continue to be global, but component MRO could become more regionally oriented. And with the extended range of the latest generation of narrowbodies, such as the Airbus A321XLR, there won’t be a truly global narrowbody heavy maintenance market, but perhaps it becomes cross-regional.
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