Podcast: Aftermarket Insights From Dubai Airshow 2025

Listen in as Aviation Week editors James Pozzi, Lee Ann Shay and Christine Boynton discuss significant airline MRO contracts, GTF engine progress, regional training strategies and Boeing's supply chain developments at Dubai Airshow 2025.

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James Pozzi:
Welcome to the MRO podcast. I'm James Pozzi, MRO editor for the EMEA region, and today we're looking at MRO activity at the Dubai Airshow 2025. Joining us today are two Aviation Week editors who are in Dubai at the airshow. Speaking to us are Lee Ann Shay, executive editor of MRO and Business Aviation, and Christine Boynton, senior editor for Air Transport at Aviation Week. Lee Ann, Christine, welcome to the podcast.

Lee Ann Shay:
Thank you. Thanks, James. We are at the airshow, and the Baltic Bees are flying overhead, so just in case you hear some jets, that's what it is—atmospheric background noise.

James Pozzi:
Okay, so let's start with, I guess, some of the activity that's taken place at Dubai. Typically, the Middle East, and particularly the Gulf states, are characterized by their growth and ambition. The Dubai Airshow has always been a good showcase of some of this growth so far. To me, it looks like there's been a very widebody-heavy event in terms of announcements and orders, although, of course, there has been significant activity related to narrowbody programs. I think the 737 MAX, the A320neo, and their engine types—of course, the CFM LEAP and the Pratt & Whitney GTF. So, Lee Ann, starting with you, what have been some of the biggest deals, I guess, at Dubai so far relating to the aftermarket that you can share with us?

Lee Ann Shay:
So, thanks, James. There has been quite a bit of MRO news. I talked to the CFO of DAE today, which is part of the MOALAA group. DAE used to have two divisions: the Capital Division, which primarily leased engines long-term, and it also had its MRO division. Here at the airshow, they launched their Asset Management Division. What this is doing is taking the engine leasing piece of it, but also they're investing $100 million so far—and we definitely should expect further investment—in midlife engines. They're going to also be doing asset management, component management, and then managing those engines through to the end of life, really providing a much more holistic engine service. And, of course, their MRO division can also support that. So, I thought that was pretty interesting.

As far as contracts go, there have been quite a few. Etihad Airways, based in Abu Dhabi—not far from Dubai, obviously—signed four agreements with Lufthansa Technik that included everything from a big total component support agreement covering its entire A320 and A321 fleet (and those are the CEOs and the neos) as well as the A380 landing gear and a couple of other things.

A couple of others just to point out: Kenya Airways extended its airplane health management agreement with Boeing, and on the business aviation side, Gama Aviation in Sharjah opened its new FBO, which also includes maintenance.

James Pozzi:
Excellent. Thank you, Lee Ann, for giving us a rundown of those. And yeah, especially interesting about DAE—definitely one to watch.

Christine Boynton:
Another interesting deal that was announced at the show is Emirates and Safran Seats have actually agreed to establish a manufacturing and seat assembly facility in Dubai. Now, that facility will support not only Emirates' retrofit program, but it'll also serve other Safran Seats airline customers in the region. When the facility is up and running, it's going to first focus on economy seats for cabin retrofits before extending to line-fit in the future.

The partners are aiming to complete construction of the facility—which will be 20,000 to 25,000 square meters—by the fourth quarter of 2027. Emirates is, of course, in the midst of a retrofit program. It has 219 aircraft slated for full refurbishment: 110 A380s, 109 777s, and 76 have been completed to date.

This new facility is slated to launch with an initial assembly capability of up to 1,000 business-class seats per year before ramping up in a phased approach. Emirates described this joint industrial cooperation as the first of its kind. So, that's a big one for the region.

Lee Ann Shay:
And speaking of new facilities, I forgot to mention DAE. As we've reported on, they're now going to be part of the Pratt & Whitney GTF MRO network, and they are going to start building their new facility, which should be operational in 2028.

James Pozzi:
Yeah, of course. Lee Ann, you spoke to the OEM this week in Dubai. Rick Deurloo, who is president of Pratt & Whitney Commercial Engines, made some interesting projections related to everything like TAs and fleet numbers and the growth of that program. Of course, as we know, Pratt & Whitney have invested heavily in this and will continue to do so. I guess, what are some of the interesting things Rick told you, and maybe some of the possible numbers and targets you could share from Pratt & Whitney's side for the GTF?

Christine Boynton:
We had the chance to speak to Rick Deurloo, and one of the things he spoke about was the hot section retrofit. Now, that's the option that will be available through MRO beginning in 2026. One of the things Rick said is that Pratt tends to actually take a targeted approach for those initial installations when those begin in 2026.

The hot section is what gives existing operators a 90% to 95% durability improvement based on the GTF-A. So, that was an interesting new detail in terms of how they're going to put that option out at its MRO sites beginning in 2026.

James Pozzi:
Very interesting, of course. And there's been a lot of investment in the aftermarket side as well, as was mentioned. So, as I said in last week's podcast, that program has really had some significant progress this year on both the production and aftermarket side. So, interesting that it's still growing.

Let's look at workforce—throwing this out to either one of you. I'm sure you've both heard things this week. It's always an interesting region for the workforce and skill side of things. I guess, in recent years especially, there's been an emphasis on developing people from within the region. Of course, certain countries, including the UAE, have a large share of expats to grow their industries, and that's certainly been the case in aviation.

I guess, what have been some of the workforce-related developments at the Dubai show this week, whether it's in registered training or whatever else? Is there anything either of you could share with us about that?

Lee Ann Shay:
Yeah, Fraser Currie, who was the CEO of Joramco and now he's moved up into DAE in a strategy role, talked about the Joramco Academy—really interesting stuff there. Kind of a backtrack: Joramco recently opened its big Hangar 7, which adds another five lines of maintenance. So, they're up to like 21 or 22 lines of maintenance.

Fraser said that when they started thinking about this facility, that is where the original Joramco training facility was. That was just really focused on training people to support its internal organization. It was much smaller, and then they had to tear that down to start building Hangar 7. So, they really had to think about how they were going to staff so much more maintenance.

At that point, they decided to build the Joramco Academy to support not only its existing internal needs but also training outside of Jordan. They are going to have about 200 students this year; next year, they're talking about 300. It'll continue to add about 100 per year until they get to about 500, at which point they're going to need to expand the facility, which they do have space for.

Fraser really encouraged people to do internal training and provide external training because we've been talking about the workforce and the potential workforce shortage for a couple of decades. He said, "How many people are really doing something? If you haven't stepped up, you just got to do it."

So, it was a big challenge to the MRO industry: if you haven't started already, make sure you're training. But then, in subsequent conversations—like DAE, Lufthansa Technik, and other Middle East aftermarket companies here—I think they're all doing a lot of training programs targeting kids in school and on-the-job training through bachelor's programs.

Christine Boynton:
I think one of the things I liked about your article, Lee Ann, is the quote where he said, "It's beyond time to sit on the sidelines; everyone must take a more active role."

Lee Ann Shay:
Yeah, it was definitely, definitely a challenge to everybody to step up.

James Pozzi:
And it's interesting you cited Joramco, Lee Ann. Of course, they have a very strong relationship with Ryanair. They're growing their lines of maintenance every winter, it seems, and they're going up to double figures now on lines. I remember one of the heads of base maintenance at Ryanair said earlier this year that they only really want to work with MROs that take Part 147 training academies, et cetera, seriously and focus on developing their talent pipelines.

That was quite interesting considering the relationship there, and you cited Joramco as someone who's really focused on this. And, of course, in the region, you're right—there's been a growing number of MRO providers that are developing their own academies and schools to meet that need. Saudi Arabia is doing some interesting stuff with that as well, and various MROs around the Middle East region too, from Kuwait to, of course, Jordan, as you mentioned with Joramco.

Lee Ann Shay:
I think that parallels some other big-picture trends, and I'm glad you mentioned Joramco and Ryanair because there's more collaboration and partnerships, and it's more than lip service. You're really seeing that here through some of the discussions and deals that have been signed.

It kind of goes back to the supply chain. People are taking a more collaborative and longer-term approach, especially when it comes to the supply chain, which, as we know, has been very problematic. There needs to be more upward and downward visibility across the supply chain so there are more productive actions that people can take. That was true for the airline side, the supplier side, and the OEMs.

James Pozzi:
Yes. You also spoke to William Ampofo this week, of course, vice president of Boeing Parts and Distribution and Supply Chain, about the OEM's supply chain operations in the aftermarket. As we know—and we've talked about extensively over the last few years—Boeing has faced many supply challenges.

As I said, we've covered that extensively on this podcast, yet this year especially, it seems to have turned a corner somewhat in this area. What are some of the key takeaways you got from your conversation with William, and do you think that's the case? Do you think Boeing maybe has turned a corner in this area, which has proved very problematic and challenging for them and, of course, many others?

Lee Ann Shay:
Yeah, good point. I moderated a panel here about the supply chain, and when I asked all of the panelists whether we're kind of out of the dark, they said, "No, there are still some challenges." Are we becoming more resilient? Yes.

But in the case of Boeing, they've made some really smart investments that are going to pay off. When you think about the Boeing supply chain, they had some legacy businesses that they were integrating—from Aviall to KLX. Then the Boeing distributors were putting the aircraft parts into new manufacturing, bundling all that together.

But when they did that, there were a lot of disparate IT systems. So they were connected but not really connected in an optimized way. For the last several years, Boeing has been implementing SAP for HANA, and they just finished that whole implementation across the parts business in October, just last month.

What that really enabled them to do is optimize the supply chain. They also just launched a new e-commerce site. Normally, we would be like, "Okay, e-commerce site, whatever." But the difference with this one is that it's now really all connected.

When you go down to it, they have all their parts catalogs there across defense, commercial, and business aviation. They've also been increasing their inventory of non-Boeing proprietary parts. So, when you think about it, if you're able to just buy more parts, it makes it easier for you—they're going to sell more parts.

This new website also makes it much easier in the search function. We all like that kind of auto-corrective feature, and this new website has that. I really do think this is going to be a game-changer for Boeing's parts distribution.

Christine Boynton:
It seems like a lot of people on that panel and others that day, Lee Ann, were talking about really just continuing to build resilience against this constraint that seems to be extending into a new normal.

Investing in inventory, as you said, and also being more proactive through better analysis of all of this data they're collecting. Increased collaborations and partnerships were another theme we heard.

Joramco said something that really stuck with me. They said they were forecasting that next year, perhaps almost all airlines will start deploying more capital and having more spares as a revenue stream—effectively becoming suppliers themselves. I thought that was an interesting comment.

Lee Ann Shay:
Oh yeah. Flyadeal's CEO also said that even though they are a new low-cost carrier with great ambitions to grow, they are hoarding parts, especially on the engine side.

You can't have a just-in-time operation anymore because you need to have an operation that is resilient. You still have to fly and keep that flying schedule. So, in order to do that, you have to invest in a lot more inventory.

Flyadeal is hoping that they can stop this hoarding in the near term, but it has definitely changed the low-cost model, at least for now.

James Pozzi:
Yeah, and that's interesting. Earlier this year, Emma Midlek and Steve Greenway—I think you're talking about Flyadeal—had some very interesting things to say about the supply chain and the impacts it had on their operations.

So, very interesting that they've taken that approach because that's something they kind of hinted at back then.

So, yeah, a lot of ground covered. Thank you very much, Lee Ann and Christine, especially for recording for us from the noise of the exhibition hall in Dubai, in the press area.

Thank you for bringing the insights from the Dubai Airshow 2025. That'll be all for today. Thank you to the listeners for tuning in.

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