India’s burgeoning maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) industry received a much-needed boost after the government announced tax concessions on the import of spare parts and testing equipment. The government also extended the period for required installation of the parts and equipment to one year from three months. “The MRO sector is at a nascent stage. Encouraging the industry will generate employment besides other benefits,” Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said in a budget presentation to parliament.

Lion Air’s wholly owned maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) company Lion Technics is scheduled to open a heavy maintenance base later this year on Batam island, off the coast of Singapore.

Aeronautical Engineers, Inc. (AEI), betting that freight-hauling economics will differ significantly from the passenger-hauling returns that are driving 50-seat regional jets from airline service, has given the go-ahead to its Bombardier CRJ100 and 200 passenger-to-freighter (PTF) conversion program. AEI, which has been studying the CRJ conversion market for some time, says it is “fully funding” the program’s development costs. It will convert the regional jets (RJs) under a supplemental type certificate (STC) licensed from Bombardier.

U.S. defense budgets are declining, but Parker Hannifin, a leading supplier of hydraulics, fluid systems and flight controls, still sees lots of opportunity in aerospace. With major positions on platforms such as the Airbus A350, Bombardier CSeries, Comac C919 and Embraer Legacy 450/500, the company projects annual aerospace sales will rise two-thirds by mid-2016, to $3.5 billion. Roger Sherrard, president of Parker's aerospace unit, and Thomas L. Williams, executive vice president and operating officer, spoke with AW&ST Editor-in-Chief Joseph C.

JorAmco has added a new flag to its roll of customer national airlines.

Ethiopian Airlines' maintenance arm has been approved to overhaul CFM International CFM56-3 and -7B engines.

At first glance, you would think logistics at PDQ Air Spares would be fairly simple. The Hampshire, England-based distributor of spare parts does very little outbound shipping. Its airline customers use their own freight agents to manage order shipments. Nor does PDQ handle its own inbound shipments; it outsourced that function to B&H Worldwide. The third-party logistics provider negotiates rates and schedules shipments with carriers such as FedEx, DHL and UPS for PDQ.

Airlines use predictive maintenance to slash costs, convert unscheduled maintenance to scheduled events and reduce asset downtime. They have been doing it on engines for some time, and now airlines can perform predictive maintenance much more effectively because new aircraft yield more data, and the tools for exploiting it have improved dramatically. Yet ways of thinking and business processes also must change, which often is more difficult than tapping sensors.