Airlines, MROs and OEMs need to work more collaboratively to address the capacity crunch as demand for maintenance facilities outstrips supply.

A panel debate on the first day of MRO Middle East in Dubai this heard from carriers and maintenance specialists about capacity issues the industry is facing.

Fraser Currie, chief executive of Joramco, told delegates that MROs need to be thinking about how they work more closely in partnership with airlines.

“I’m still getting airlines calling me now asking for availability in April. Sorry guys, that ship sailed last year. You need to be getting your planning done more in advance.”

Currie said Joramco is poised to increase physical capacity in its base in Jordan adding a further five maintenance lines in the third quarter this year.

But he said the firm has been able to operate more effectively in recent years by using the space available to it more efficiently and investing in labour to get aircraft through more quickly.

“There are a lot of small things you can do, and that we have done, to increase the capacity,” Currie said.

One of Joramco’s key customers is Europe’s largest airline, Ryanair, which has recently completed agreement on a long-term 10-year MRO programme.

Andrew Holder, deputy director of heavy maintenance at Ryanair, said the airline is poised for significant fleet growth from 575 to 800 by the end of the decade.

“We have to futureproof our maintenance, fleets and operations,” he said. “There’s no denying there’s a resource shortage in Europe.”

Although Ryanair has considerable MRO capacity in Ireland, it is looking outside of Europe for the majority of its third party requirements that can be relied on to deliver on schedule.

Holder said, because of the crisis in availability of skilled and certified engineers, the airline likes to work with MROs that invest in their own academies, as Joramco does.

Yasin Birinci, chief technical officer at Turkish Technic, said: “Nowadays capacity sells itself because demand is so high.

“The most important thing is capacity for components because to use hangers more efficiently you have to be faster. You have to support your customer with supply chain.

“You have to build healthy relationships with OEM partners because you want to get that material on time and there are some real problems in that.”

Kallash Krishnaswamy, senior vice president of aftermarket for Spirit AeroSystems, said the capacity crunch is different depending on the age of the airframe.

For vintage platforms there is a materials sourcing challenge because components have been out of production for a very long time, which is not an issue for legacy platforms.

It remans to be seen what challenge next-gen platforms will bring because of the very different models OEMs have adopted. “It’s a completely different animal,” said Krishnaswamy.

“The new generation platforms are not going to need major overhauls any time soon but when they do come about we are going to have to be ready.”

Director of technical operations at Riyadh Air, Justin O’Donnell, said the planned second flag carrier for the region is currently in an “information gathering stage”.

Growth plans for Saudi Arabia are set to see 600 aircraft enter the market in the next decade assuming the country meets its Vision 2030 targets for visitor numbers.

“The main takeaway is what we can do currently within the Kingdom and what we have to develop.

“Even developing new capacity is not going to handle that new aircraft capacity. We are going to have to think what our long-term strategy is.”

In the long-term O’Donnell said he sees a hybrid solution being adopted with Riyadh Air supporting the eco-system by using capacity delivered by partners outside of Saudi Arabia.

“It’s a puzzle and its taking quite a while, but we are going to work it out.”