MRO Asia-Pacific 2025: Five Key Takeaways From Last Year's Event
Ahead of MRO Asia-Pacific 2025, we take a look back at last year's event, described by our editors as a packed and fun-filled couple of days, with plenty of interesting discussions and an "absolute hive of MRO activity."
Lee Ann Shay, executive editor of MRO and business aviation; James Pozzi, MRO editor, EMEA; and Chen Chuanren, Southeast Asia and China correspondent, Air Transport World, met up to record a podcast discussing the highlights and the trends the region was seeing at the time.
Here are five takeaways from that discussion.
1. Technology Implementation Enhances Workforce Retention
Technology adoption in aviation maintenance is proving beneficial for workforce retention rather than threatening jobs. For example, Pratt & Whitney used a new robotic system to reduce a 14-hr. procedure to seven hours, requiring only one person instead of four. This allowed workers to learn valuable new skills while redeploying others to more engaging work—creating a "win-win" situation for productivity and employee satisfaction.
2. Capacity Constraints Driving Regional MRO Expansion
The Asia-Pacific region faces significant MRO capacity challenges, with major providers implementing ambitious expansion plans. Singapore-based ST Engineering planned to add four new hangars locally while also expanding in the U.S. Asia Digital Engineering was opening a massive 14-bay maintenance facility in Kuala Lumpur. Multiple countries are developing strategic plans to become MRO hubs:
- Queensland, Australia has a 10-year roadmap to attract MRO investment
- The Philippines is expanding beyond Manila to Clark Air Base
- Malaysia is focusing on two airports in the Selangor district (KLIA and Subang)
- Vietnam, Korea and Japan are all building MRO infrastructure to meet regional demand
This expansion is critical as the region faces unprecedented growth in aviation activity.
3. Supply Chain and Parts Reliability Creating Operational Challenges
Airlines across the Asia-Pacific region are struggling with parts reliability issues. Malaysia Airlines' CEO highlighted that 28% of their spares were rotables that were "failing randomly," leaving them like "sitting ducks" due to unpredictable failures. He called for OEMs to take ownership of these quality issues, which may stem from talent shortages or inspection problems. Meanwhile, Air Asia had been unable to fully reactivate their stored fleet due to limited MRO slots, directly impacting their operational capacity.
4. Aircraft Retirement Delays Driving Retrofit Strategies
With approximately 4,000 new aircraft expected to be delivered to Asia-Pacific (plus 2,000 to China) over the next decade, airlines are facing significant delays in receiving new aircraft. This has forced carriers like Philippine Airlines, Thai Airways, and Singapore Airlines to develop retrofit plans for their existing fleets. The industry sees aircraft retrofitting as a major growth area in Asia-Pacific as airlines extend the service life of older aircraft while waiting for new deliveries from Airbus and Boeing.
5. Workforce Development Critical to Solving Long-Term Capacity Issues
While physical infrastructure expansion is underway across the region, industry leaders identify workforce development as perhaps the most critical factor in addressing capacity challenges. As one executive bluntly stated: "Without people, you can't do anything."
This aligns with the challenges in attracting Gen Z talent, who have different expectations from previous generations. The industry must focus on talent acquisition, training and retention strategies that appeal to younger workers while also addressing regional labor mobility constraints in countries facing declining birth rates and restrictive immigration policies.
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