Podcast: Inside Europe's Aftermarket—Live From MRO Europe

European fleet growth, supply chain bottlenecks, AI, Gen Z, supplier contracts and geopolitics were all up for discussion as Aviation Week's team convened to record a special episode of the MRO Podcast live at MRO Europe in London.

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Welcome to the MRO podcast. I'm James Pozzi, MRO editor for the ME region, and today live at MRO Europe 2025 in London. We are going to look at some of the key themes and talking points over the last couple of days here. So joining me to my left is Lindsay Bjerregaard, managing editor for MRO at Aviation Week Network. John Broderick, senior Air Transport and Safety editor for Aviation Week Network. And Daniel Williams, senior manager for Fleet Flight and Forecast Data for Aviation Week Network as well. Lindsay, Sean, Dan, thank you for joining us.

Lindsay Bjerregaard: Thanks, James.

James Pozzi: It's good to be here back again.

Sean Broderick: Don't start singing. Do not start singing, bud.

James Pozzi: No one wants that. Let's start with yourself. Of course, you've done a couple of forecasts over the last couple of days. Lots of good data in there, lots of interesting things pertaining to the European region. Firstly, what is standing out to you? What can you tell us about that and what are you seeing, I guess in Europe in general? What picture are you getting from it?

Dan Williams: Well, yeah, thank you. We just recently launched our 2026 commercial fleet in MRO forecast specifically for Europe. We're looking about 5,200 deliveries over the coming decade with about 2,000 retirements. So the fleet is going to grow by about 3,000 aircraft, give or take, over the coming decade. It should come probably as no surprise that Airbus wins that race, 55% of the aircraft will be Airbus aircraft and come the end of the decade. Again, no big surprise, but asks some interesting questions about Europe as a whole in terms of utilization. It's been back at pre-COVID levels for a long time. We're still collectively, not just Europe, but globally struggling with MRO in the sense of getting aircraft and predominantly engines overhauled and serviced in a timely manner. And I'm sure people more learned than I like Sean can talk to that. And so we're still seeing some aging aircraft in the fleets in Europe because we are waiting for these new aircraft to come into service, which are just taking a little bit longer than we'd hoped. And certainly the airframe MROs, OEMs, sorry, would've hoped because they want to be delivering aircraft and they're struggling because of engines, because of landing gear, because of a multitude of other things, supply chain, workforce, etc.

James Pozzi: Absolutely. Bringing Sean, of course, Dan mentioned those, the deliveries for the aircraft and engines and the delays there. I know you had something to say about, oh, you have supply chains bolstering efforts, I guess to amid material shortages that we're seeing in Europe and beyond, and the general performance of complaints that we're seeing as well. What have you got to tell us about that?

Sean Broderick: Sure. So the theme isn't necessarily different from certainly recent MRO shows. Material supply seems to be the primary bottleneck, but I think what's changing is the recognition that the issues are not going to be fixed simply by delivering a few more airplanes and then retiring ones that aren't delivered for growth but are delivered for replacement and then getting more USM in the market. I mean, the issue, if you go back to what Dan said and talking about the delivery issues on the OE side, that's a material supply issue as well. A lot of it at least on the engine side. And when you go up the supply chain or down the supply chain, the sources converge at the same three forgings and casting suppliers or whatever the need to make critical engine parts, both for new engines and for spares, spares for older engines. And so what we're starting to see is recognition from the very top tier that the manufacturer says, geez, we need to help fix this problem by getting out into supply chain by encouraging investment in the supply chain and maybe even doing things ourselves like coming up with more repairs.

I wrote a story a couple days ago, CFM, GE and Safran really coming up with some new repairs for engine blades that in the past they were more than happy to see not repaired and go to scrap because that means new engine blades will be bought. Well now they can't keep up with the demand for the engine blades on the current engines on the older engines. So they're saying we need to help and we need to step in here. You're also seeing slowly but absolutely seeing impact on the PMA market. I talked to a PMA supplier who I will not name here on the floor just today talking about how seeing more opportunities both in new markets, you can won't provide color there have to be careful here, but also getting more approvals on PMA for some popular engine CFM56, V2500 and having orders in the queue, companies ready to buy those parts because they simply can't get 'em in any other place.

So I guess the moral is that there's recognition that the problem is not going away. It's part of, again, the phrase that I can't stand. That's sort of the new normal, it's part of the supply chain phase now. It's not going to untangle itself. It's something that industry is going to have to try to fix. And it's a recognition that even if it costs an Airbus or a Boeing some money or they really see it as a new line of business, open up sort of a USM outfit or to come up with some repairs that they can industrialize. I mean, they talk about helping the customers and they do want to help the customers, but they also, as the Boeing executive said this morning, they have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders. That means they're not going to do anything without it coming at least neutral on the bottom lines. But it seems to be a little bit of a change from where there was much less recognition of that they needed to get themselves actively involved in solving the problems. I think on the OE side.

James Pozzi: Yeah, I think it's very interesting. Of course, you mentioned the OEMs, obviously the airframe OEMs now are getting into USM and teardowns Boeing with FESG and Airbus with Tarmac Aerosave of course now. And those efforts I thought were quite interesting and there's a lot of talk about collaboration today as well. They seem to be a real belief that maybe that is turning in the right direction, companies maybe are collaborating a bit more together. Is that something you

Sean Broderick: Yes, Bob, we can come back to performance on the second round. I'll hand it over to Lindsay for because there's stuff there too.

James Pozzi: Yes, plenty more, no doubt. Lindsay, you moderated a very interesting panel earlier on workforce and training that probably better than anyone in the industry on the editorial side. What were some of the takeaways, I guess related to that in Europe?

Lindsay Bjerregaard: Thanks, James. Well, I feel like I'm becoming really predictable on these show podcasts where it's like there's three things in life, death, taxes and me talking about workforce. But yeah, I mean there were quite a few sessions aside from my own panel that brought up workforce issues and I thought it was interesting. We're here in London and we heard from a couple British airlines, not British Airways, but Ryanair EasyJet, they both reported that Brexit has had a pretty big impact on their ability to find enough qualified workforce. There's actually an editorial about this in the most recent issue of Inside MRO. I'm talking about how much more difficult it is for British companies to recruit labor from other countries within Europe now because the certifications that are required have changed and that sort of thing. So I thought that that was really interesting. But Risto, the CEO of Magnetic Group, there was a panel where they were talking about all kinds of shifting strategies and challenges in the industry, and he straight up said, the labor shortage is what's causing all of these issues.

So we talk about it all the time, but through the supply chain on the engine side, I know a lot of the engine delays, people were talking about how labor is causing that problem as well. One of the topics we talked about during my training panel today was just sort of the differences in expectations from Gen Z about how they want to learn, how they expect to work. Obviously people had a lot of anecdotes about their own children wanting everything to be on a tablet on a screen, and we've made some progress with that in the industry where a lot of technicians on the floor are working from tablets using software and that sort of thing. But I think there's a lot that needs to be done with that. And I always hear, speaking of phrases, we are so sick of hearing in aviation, but make aviation sexy again. Everybody's wondering, how do we get young people interested in it again? And so

James Pozzi: Get it on a hat, maybe she can wear it.

Lindsay Bjerregaard: We started on that. But yeah, I mean one of the topics we talked about as well is that people are just seeing certain skills shortages with these new hires. Companies have done a lot to recruit to fill these retirements, people who have left the industry. So there's a lot of young people now in the industry, but they need time to get up to speed. And so there are different strategies about that, but I think it's going to be difficult and there's going to be some growing pains until those young workers get enough experience. And the last thing I just wanted to mention as well, there was a fireside chat with Inga Douglas, who is the CEO of GetJet Airlines here on the Go Live theater today. And we were talking about her journey to becoming a female CEO of an airline. There's data out there that says it's only 5% or 6% of female CEOs for airlines in the industry.

And so she was talking about some of the challenges that she's faced to get to where she is today. And I thought it was interesting that she mentioned a personal anecdote when I asked her about different expectations about how women should be in the workplace. Sometimes people have the idea that women are going to do administrative work or that they're supposed to be agreeable and passive. She mentioned that a coworker at one point when she had her first child or was pregnant with her first child, came up to her and asked, are you planning to step back? Are you planning to do less of this difficult work? And she was like, well, no, not at all. So I mean, I just thought that that was an interesting anecdote.

James Pozzi: Yeah, very interesting stuff. And back to the training side, it sounds like very much in all the sessions there's been a technology angle in the majority of them, and AI is very much factoring into people's plans, people's thoughts, but to me it seems pretty cautious in this region, like in other regions perhaps about the long-term impact of AI. Andy Best the chief technical officer of British Airways yesterday. But we warned against seeing it as I guess the white knight for the industry to just transform everything. And I noted that air of caution about that technology. I don't know if you'd agree with me on that. I know you report a lot on AI.

Lindsay Bjerregaard: Yeah, so unfortunately I had to miss that AI panel because I was moderating something else at the time. But Alex Derber, one of our frequent Aviation Week contributors, did point out something interesting about AI that I thought was food for thought it was, oh yeah, he's right there. He pointed, I think it was your engine panel yesterday that they got, I mean every panel, again, they talk about workforce, AI comes up, but they were talking about AI within the context of engine maintenance, and I think it was the panelist from Pratt & Whitney had said something about she thinks they're focusing on the wrong aspect of AI in schools. They're worried about making sure that people don't cheat with AI, but really it's like they should be teaching people how to work with AI to do their jobs better. So that was just an interesting thing. So thank you Alex for pointing that out.

James Pozzi: They're going through a lot of names as well for a lot of people developing their own AI and predictive programs, and they're all going through names, I don't know. I don't know. Here's my AI tool, Chris, or whatever. It's not naming a hurricane, right? Everyone's got a different name and we assume we're going to have to, I'm pretty bad with names. I'm not going to lie, give dates terrible with names. I'm going to have to remember all these different programs soon. Every company seems to be developing one and rolling it out the amount of different names I've heard over the last few days. Human names, of course. So this is our AI program. It seems like that's a whole thing. Now, Dan, back

Dan Williams: To you. I'm just going to piggyback Lindsay. So sorry for talking workforce. I know it's normally your domain, but it's true. Anecdotally we're saying that what we're seeing, and I said this on stage yesterday, the workforce is the same today, if not bigger than pre-COVID in terms of headcount. The workforce today in terms of experience is nowhere near where we were pre-COVID. And I've been chatting to people on the floor. There was a lovely gentleman I was chatting to and he does fasteners replacing fasteners, and I'm like, we're just chatting. And he's developed a tool whereby previously you'd have to have a bit of an expertise how to replace fasteners. You need a certain skill set.

He's developed a tool where it's a machine that you put on a fastener, there's a green light when you've lined it up and you hit a button to replace the fastener and you get another green light to say it's done. That's how we are moving today. It's not the learn or the learn trade, it's more the ability to use tools that enables to learn that trade quicker. And that's kind of where AI comes in. AI is an assistance. AI is not going to turn a spanner to use a kind of phrase, but AI can be used to check photos against previous photos and look very quickly at large data sets. I always use the paint example. When they fly the drone over the aircraft, they can look for paint and they can scan it very quickly, which makes a job that used to take days, take hours, and you're like, great.

So that's helping workforce because you are able to do more with less, which is, that's also a theme is people are trying to do more within the industry. They're trying to do more with less, be that less headcount, be that with a little less cash, whatever it is they're trying to do more and trying to pivot and trying to help. So the workforce thing, it will crop up and not to another workforce does impact the supply chain because the workforce is an experience. We're not building as much widgets or doohickeys in the supply chain to get them out quickly enough because the headcount's low. So it is really interesting how, and John you mentioned, we talked about this a lot over previous shows, and it's not going to go away. It's going to evolve. We're going to maybe talk about slightly different versions of it, but we're going to be talking about supply chain and workforce for probably the next decade, maybe not, hopefully not that long, but we're going to be talking on some of the themes for quite a while. So, Sean, any more thoughts?

Sean Broderick: Well, this all sort of flows into the second thing James asked about in the first round is about performance. So supplier performance and Andy Best from BA was very candid to share some of the opportunities he sees for some of his or BA's suppliers to get better in terms of delivering on contract terms. And he used the A380 program as an example, and some astronomical percentage of the contractors, over 90% have not delivered on dates certain to get things done. Interiors, the heavy check engines haven't had one engine delivered on time in 2025. He said, I don't know, maybe it's two engines. I don't know. We're talking A380, so it can't be that many engines. But still the point is that dates are being set and not met. Some of that may be experienced because some of this work, some of it can be automated or automated assisted, but you still got to have levels of expertise, whether it's doing coatings or inspections.

GE has used AI to semi-automate or simplify engine borescope inspections by having the machines collect the images. But you still have to have experts somewhere in the world and have to be at the engine, which is different, but somewhere in the world review those images and say, yeah, this is an issue. Or no, that's not. So that level of experience can't be replicated by machines. But the question we didn't get to ask BA is, so if these suppliers are constantly missing their deadlines, like when were these contracts signed for the A380? They were not signed pre-COVID, that's for sure. They were signed coming out of the pandemic when the airplanes were reactivated probably within the last few years. So what has happened at these suppliers? I guess it's really not a question for him. It's a question for the supply chain. What is happening that's causing you to miss these promised target dates on the work?

Are you having problems getting the material you need? Are you having problems ramping up to get the workers that you need? And I don't know the answer, but I do know that some of the ramifications we've seen, at least at BA's, where they've had opportunities to switch suppliers, they have, including their engine supplier on their 787-10s. They've gone from Rolls to GE because of, it's a little more complicated than just the supply chain problem. There's an engine durability problem there on the Trent 1000, that's a whole other podcast subject, but it shows what can happen if you're not delivering even as an aftermarket supplier that there are ramifications. But again, I would love to be able to go back and talk to some of those suppliers and want to know what's behind those. So maybe that's for the next podcast.

James Pozzi: Yeah, Andy's always been, of course, very candid and he was pretty critical about some of the OEM partners. And he didn't name the supplier or the OEM, you can guess if you like, but he mentioned obviously a 700-plus day TAT

Sean Broderick: As well, wasn't GE because he bought their engines,

James Pozzi: Couldn't possibly say, Lindsay, any final words? Anything else you wanted to touch on before we conclude this MRO podcast at MRO Europe? Any closing thoughts?

Lindsay Bjerregaard: Well, I'm afraid if I bring this up, it's going to turn into another 20 minutes, but I just wanted to touch on a couple things that Dan talked about in his forecast on general fleets and MRO demand things. I thought it was interesting. One, you talked about some of the geopolitical factors that might be impacting the forecast at some point in the future, a lot of them coming out of the US in terms of tariffs, the uncertainty around inflation and that sort of thing. But I also thought that it was interesting the types of questions you got from the audience. So two that I really enjoyed, and you can read about it more online as well. I wrote about this, but Dan was asked what impact does he think the forecast, what impact would it have on the forecast if tomorrow Russia's civil aviation market opened back up again? And he was also asked, how competitive is COMAC on the world stage? And so I'll leave it to him to see if he wants to say anything, but

Dan Williams: I'll try and be quick. I think the term I use with the Russian aircraft are dead to the outside world, I think was what I just said on stage. And you quoted me those words. So I will stand by them. Yeah, the aircraft, even if the war ended tomorrow, the sanctions wouldn't end tomorrow. But even if the war and the sanctions ended tomorrow, huge hypotheticals, those aircraft that are currently being operated by Russian operators, they're not going to be good for Russian operators unless you are a friend of Russia operator, Belarus as an example. So the only way to make those suitable for outside of Russia would to be basically stripped them down to recertify every single part of it and put 'em back together again, which is just not going to happen. So if it all ended tomorrow, there's no fleet there to use. Russia would probably love more fleet to be added to their service, but there's no secondhand aircraft available for them to buy. Even if they bought new, they'd have to wait six, seven, eight years for an aircraft, unless they went for something like a Tu-204 or an E2

Sean Broderick: Spirit A320s

Dan Williams: Spirit A320s, or alternatively, they'd have to lease them, but no lessor is going to lease them an aircraft without a huge bond because of what's previously happened. So the Russian room is really interesting and very briefly, COMAC is a great, the C919 is, I should say, perfectly good aircraft. That's how I described the MAX 10 for China. It is going to be the second fiddle to Airbus for the narrow body in China and maybe some of China's friends, let's say. And that'd be fine. However, is it a danger with the tit for tat going on? I wrote when my presentation last week that tariffs made may change during the course of this presentation. Well, between me writing that and presenting it, we saw the 100% addition to China on the tariffs, which may change because it's November. So there's no making friends between China and the US with the geopolitical tensions right now. And ultimately, China need to place an order for a reasonably significant number of aircraft soon. So that sounds like Boeing may not win that. So they will look to the C919, but if the geopolitical tensions continue, then the US could turn off the engine and they haven't got a C919, how many C919s have been delivered this year, six, seven. And they predicted 75. So that's why it's good to have an independent forecast is because we are not biased. Going to be a big fourth quarter at COMAC. I think

James Pozzi: Airbus likewise. Right. Well, on that note, we'll wrap up today's podcast. But Lindsay, Sean, Dan, thank you so much for joining and getting your thoughts on MRO Europe. See you in Amsterdam. See you in Amsterdam one year's time. And thank you to the audience for watching today. Today's MRO podcast. Thank you very much.