US maintenance, repair and overhaul company AAR is considering offering heavy maintenance on the Embraer 170/190 family as the number of aircraft in that family requiring heavy checks continues to grow.
Recently COO of Embraer Aircraft Maintenance Services (EAMS) John Linn said the airframer is working to ensure the right level of heavy maintenance capacity for the E-Jets exists in North America. He and his team are currently in discussions with potential members of a maintenance network for the aircraft family.
AAR CEO David Storch told ATI during an interview at the MRO Americas conference the company is "exploring that [E-Jet heavy maintenance] as we sit here today".
Highlighting much depends on the opportunities that arise Storch explains: "If it emerges next week, we'll be doing it next week."
The company will have the necessary tooling to perform that work, and while Storch says AAR might not have all the tooling in place currently, that would not be a limiting factor in developing E-Jet maintenance.
"We would be able to get up to speed pretty quickly," he says, "As we did when we got into the CRJs."
In the meantime Storch says AAR has decent prospects to replenish some capacity at is narrowbody maintenance centre in Indianapolis after United Airlines opted to shed its Boeing 737 classic fleet and FedEx decided to retire some of its 727 aircraft.
He says while Indianapolis is not at full capacity the facility remains profitable, and is performing well. "We don't pay for capacity unless we use it. So from a financial vantage point it is working for us."
AAR also performs work for Southwest Airlines and the Indianapolis centre.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
