There is perhaps little doubt that a degree of management fashion-following lies behind some of the trends observed in the running of the air transport industry. The sceptics who blame mere fashion for the widespread move to arm's-length operation of airline maintenance during the 1990s now look to be on shaky ground, however,.
Although several major airlines have taken traumatic decisions to distance their core operations from their maintenance functions, it is striking that, in a tough market, none of the large players has chosen to offload its overhaul interests completely. Furthermore, as the wider industry begins to clamber back up the economic cycle, the maintenance arena is one where it is the largest competitors which look set to thrive.
Unquestionably there is a degree of artifice about the practice of distancing maintenance from core airline operations. It is not all corporate gimmickry however. Shannon Aerospace, owned by Swissair, Lufthansa and GPA, and British Airways, with its Boeing 747 Maintenance Centre (BAMC), have already illustrated that major carriers can re-invent their overhaul activities with huge cost savings, primarily through the use of innovative working practices which would be impossible to introduce inside the conventional airline structure. Lufthansa is in the process of emphasising the point with its Lufthansa Technik venture, while Aer Lingus has illustrated the same argument in a more painful way with its labour difficulties at TEAM Aer Lingus. In a parallel development, FLS Aerospace, even without the support of an airline parent, is ditching most of its aviation interests and retrenching firmly into third-party maintenance.
FLS, with maintenance as its sole raison d'ˆtre is, not unnaturally, happy to take on a variety of work. The airline-spawned organisations have been more inclined to specialise - for now anyway. BAMC is a 747-only centre and Shannon has launched firmly on a narrowbody base with widebody aspirations related only to the 767, which brings commonality advantages with its core 757 operations. What all have in common is a belief that there is a maintenance market to come which justifies their continued presence in an arena which, for some at least, is today an optional activity.
Source: Flight International
