With an average fleet age of 8 years, most Chinese business aircraft operators are still covered by aircraft warranty. If, however, they find themselves in need of acquiring new parts, these tend to come from relatively young fleets. As these fleets are inevitably aging, in the near future the rotable aircraft parts market in China is expected to grow.

With multiple booming industries and the rapidly growing middle class, development of aviation industry in China is a national priority, so the Chinese government is allocating considerable resources towards further extending domestic aviation production capabilities, building new airports, training pilots and increasing local aviation MRO capacity. At the moment, China is the second largest domestic aviation market in the world with the fastest growing passenger traffic rate of 6.6 percent per year.

Aviation companies often opt for rotable aircraft parts vs. new components for several reasons. First of all, retables can be safely used a number of times, even after being subjected to major repairs. After all, new aircraft parts are pricey and very few aircraft operators are wealthy enough to afford or willing to engage in such unnecessary spending. According to industry experts, aircraft rotables cost up to 5-10 times less than new parts. Moreover, in many cases companies opt for extra time savings, as when it comes to rotables, a typical lead time is significantly shorter than the one required to locate, order and deliver their new counterparts. Therefore, in most scenarios, by ordering second-hand, aircraft operators commonly enjoy a less expensive, yet still warranty-covered and safe alternative.

“Naturally, all fleets are aging and the spare parts support warranties are expiring. Luckily, reputable providers offer parts that are serviced at approved repair facilities only, thus critical reliability is always ensured with Certificates of Conformance, regardless of the region. For instance, all rotables that our company offers in China also come with the CAAC release certificates included, so our customers can rest being assured that the savings they make come with no compromises on safety,” said Darius Saluga, CEO of Jet MS – a global provider of integrated aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul solutions for business and regional aviation.

FL Technics, a global provider of integrated aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul services, has announced completing a major upgrade project for already the fifth Airbus-A321 in 2017.

“It is very uncommon for aircraft operators to entrust MROs with projects of such scope. They typically prefer to complete them at the manufacturer’s facilities. Therefore, the fact that one of our clients has selected FL Technics to conduct such complex upgrades and modifications on as many as 5 leased Airbus-A321s comes to show that our team has developed an exceptionally high reputation and earned major trust amongst prominent market players,” said Zilvinas Lapinskas, CEO of FL Technics.

According to Z. Lapinskas, although the project was extremely complex due to an extensive number of technical changes to the aircraft required by the customer, FL Technics engineering, planning and base maintenance teams did a brilliant job and completed the project within the set time frame.

The latest modification comprised fundamental equipment and furnishing changes in cargo compartment, including the removal of ACT in the AFT cargo hold and the installation of semi-automatic cargo loading system to both cargo compartments. The passenger’s compartment had to be reconfigured by modifying monuments and adapting seat layout. The newly installed ventilation and heating system in the AFT cargo compartment allows for safe animal transportation.

Another significant part of this project was the installation of wireless ground link quick access recorder designed to provide quick and easy access to raw flight data. Now the Operator no longer needs to physically download data from FDR. Instead, such data will be automatically sent to the Operator’s data-server upon aircraft arrival to the airport.

“From production planning and maintenance management to logistics and real-time technical data coordination with the Airbus – the entire project required not only in-depth technical know-how, but also advanced project management skills. Amongst the greatest challenges was the need to organize all the necessary resources for different project stages in advance. From the perspective of aircraft modifications, this calls for a completely new level of aircraft maintenance expertise in an MRO organization,” shared Ievgen Oleksandrov, Lead Engineer at Engineering and Planning Department at FL Technics. The last of the five customer’s aircraft was ready in just 28 calendar days.