By Swati Ketkar
Almost every other day for the last year and a half, we hear of some news or the other from Indian aerospace and MRO circles making headlines, and almost of it on a positive note. Experts are of the opinion that India’s MRO sector is rapidly evolving from a nascent stage a couple of years back to soaring new heights each day. More new players are entering the Indian MRO market, existing players and repair shops are expanding their capabilities eyeing potential demand, airlines are ramping up their in-house maintenance teams to save on revenue and reduce dependency, overseas MROs and OEMs are eyeing India with interest and looking at potential opportunities with existing Indian MROs and airlines to grab a portion of India’s MRO pie, newer hangars, repair shops, warehouses for spares inventory are steadily creating a firm and solid foundation for a robust MRO ecosystem in India, something that was lacking since a long time.
While speaking to an MRO industry veteran a few weeks back, he kept repeating just one thought – The demand is there, currently and it will only rise with time, one of the major challenges that MROs will be facing in the coming months is to deal with this rising demand. Experts feel that MROs are never going to be able to meet the vigorous MRO demand over the next couple of years.
The truth is staring right at us, Air India has placed a whooping 470 aircraft order, IndiGo has placed an order of 500 A320s and another 30 widebody A350s while Akasa is out with 150 aircraft on order and even SpiceJet has hinted of taking its current fleet from 28 to 100 in the next couple of years. Air India is already taking delivery of one aircraft every week, and this will continue over the next few years. All the swanky new aircraft are fitted with the latest avionics, latest technology, next-gen engines, super-smooth in-flight entertainment (IFEs) and much more. This makes the job of existing AMEs all the more challenging as they need to keep themselves abreast of all the latest technology and innovations in the new aircraft to carry out the repair work on them. Thus, one of the key tasks before every MRO in the country at present is to upskill and train their technicians and AMEs regularly for smooth operations.
Air India’s in-house maintenance strategy
Air India did place record aircraft orders, but they didn’t stop at that. The airline is ensuring the aircraft are well taken care of by their men. Let us look at the various steps taken by Air India to maintain their new as well as legacy fleet.
1. Centralized CAMO Operations -Air India’s CAMO, previously spread across India is now fully centralized at Delhi NCR, streamlining operations and ensuring top-tier fleet management.
2. Airbus A350-900 Induction: Air India has expanded their CAMO capabilities to include the cutting-edge A350-900 and inducted 6 A350-900 aircraft into the fleet, with complete in-house maintenance
3. Boeing B737 max handling through in-house Maintenance
4. Manual Harmonization – Air India successfully harmonized its operational manuals with Vistara’s system of Operations (SOO), ensuring a seamless integration of best practices across the group
5. Air India CAR145 Approval: The airline achieved a major regulatory milestone by obtaining approval for Air India 145 from DGCA India, enhancing its ability to maintain the fleet with in-house capabilities. The first to get for Airbus A-350
6. Unified Maintenance Approval – The airline recently merged the line maintenance units of Air India and Vistara, thus establishing a unified Group Air India CAR 145 capability, further boosting their maintenance and engineering capabilities.
7. Refurbished Mumbai Hangar and office complex to take on widebody Maintenance.
8. MRO Expansion: Air India recently broke ground at Bengaluru Airport to set up the largest MRO facility in India, marking a significant step forward in its commitment towards self-reliance and world-class maintenance.
9. Successfully gained CAR147 approval from DGCA and merged Vistara 147 into one approval for the group strengthening our operational and engineering synergies across the group. The first one to get CAR147 approval for A350 to train engineers in-house.
“These milestones are a testament to our relentless pursuit of excellence, innovation and self-reliance. We are committed to shaping the future of aviation in India and beyond! Of course, the complete ecosystem is much talked about,” commented Sisira Dash, Chief Technical Officer, Air India in his recent LinkedIn post.
The sudden interest in India’s engine MRO segment!
Just a few months back, India’s engine MRO sector was an unchartered space, barren and empty except for a couple of players. There was a huge gap in India’s engine MRO market. Eyeing this gap and looking at the upcoming demand coupled with Safran’s huge LEAP MRO facility in Hyderabad, many overseas OEMs and MROs have developed deep interest in this sector. About a year back, Standard Aero hinted at a potential joint venture with an Indian partner to venture into the engine MRO space. Interestingly Israel Aerospace Industries is already in talks with a couple of Indian companies to set up its dedicated passenger-to-freighter (P2F) conversion center and the company hopes to set up a facility in the next two years. The facility will cater to A330 or B777 conversions with IAI investing a few million dollars in its India facility.
Apart from the P2F facility, IAI is also looking at establishing an engine maintenance facility in India due to the country’s strong future demand for commercial engine MRO.
Meanwhile, IAI recently launched its Indian subsidiary, Aerospace Services India with ambitious plans to establish a large MRO hub for defence in Gurugram. IAI is currently awaiting a nod from the government for the license to set up this MRO, thus creating a huge scope for jobs. IAI has further hinted that this is just their first step in building capabilities, they are planning robust expansion in India.
Magellan is also looking to jointly develop an aircraft engine MRO facility with Aequs at the Belagavi Special Economic Zone in Karnataka and has signed an initial pact with it for this. The facility will focus on infrastructure development and cost advantages, among others, offering its services for both civil and military aircraft engines. The proposed facility is expected to have the ability to strip, rebuild, and test engines to help alleviate existing capacity constraints.
In another deal, US defence major Lockheed Martin and Tata Advanced Systems Limited (TASL) announced a collaboration for establishing a Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility in India to support the IAF’s fleet of 12 C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft as well as other global C-130J fleets. This comes on the backdrop of the mega-deal of the Indian Air Force (IAF) for procuring Medium Transport Aircraft (MTA)
This agreement provides a framework for collaboration on future potential business opportunities to include the establishment of the MRO and also expanding C-130J manufacturing and assembly in India to produce aircraft for the IAF’s MTA programme, subject to government approvals.
Thus, apart from AI Engineering Services and the upcoming Safran facility, many new entities are entering the engine MRO space in India, ensuring healthy competition and a robust engine overhaul ecosystem in the country.
The Dassault Jump
Dassault Aviation is all set to expand its India footprint with a new MRO facility near the upcoming Delhi Noida International Airport/Jewar International Airport. The OEM plans to use the facility for the maintenance and overhaul of Rafale and Mirage 2000 fighter aircraft.
The facility will allow India’s armed services to maintain their Rafale and Mirage 2000 fleets in-country. Dassault is in the process of land acquisition near the airport. Further Dassault is in the process of establishing a new Indian entity, Dassault Aviation Maintenance Repair and Overhaul India (DAMROI), to provide MRO support for French-origin fighter aircraft in India. Going ahead, Dassault has revealed its plans to gradually expand the MRO capabilities at DAMROI in collaboration with the industry, to further enhance support for French-origin fighter jets in IAF’s inventory.
Noida-Jewar MRO hub
The upcoming Noida International Airport (NIAL) has fast-tracked the process of developing an MRO facility at the airport and has issued a global tender for hiring a company to develop the 40-acre airport MRO facility. This facility will be part of the aviation hub and will be developed on the premises of the airport in the ongoing phase.
Noida International Airport will have both an MRO facility (40 acres) within the airport and a larger facility (MRO hub) on 1365 acres of land adjacent to it. The MRO hub is a part of the airport’s second phase of development involving the acquisition of 1,365 hectares of land. The process of land acquisition is currently underway. Once the land acquisition is complete the government will hand over the land to NIAL for further development.
Currently, the Noida airport authorities are in talks with various airlines as well as third-party MROs to establish their hangar facilities in the airport vicinity.
Apart from Noida, the government is also keen on establishing MRO hubs in various Tier II states like Bhogampura, Tirupati, Vishakhapatnam etc. If MRO clusters come up in different corners of India, automatically the question of aircraft maintenance, turnaround times and supply chain will be tackled at hand.
The Adani-giant enters the MRO sector.
Just recently Gautam Adani, Founder and Chairman of the Adani Group met Eric Martel, chief executive of Bombardier, to discuss a potential partnership to establish a Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) for servicing civil as well as defence aircraft. This hardly comes as a surprise as Adani had previously hinted at a big MRO investment by acquiring Air Works, although the deal didn’t work out as anticipated, Adanis is now looking at an OEM JV to come out stronger in the MRO sector.
In June 2024, Adani Defence and Aerospace, an arm of Adani Enterprise signed a pact with UAE-based EDGE group to establish a global platform leveraging defence and aerospace capabilities.
As a part of the deal, the two companies will also develop R&D facilities in India and the UAE: setting up development, production, and maintenance facilities for defence and aerospace solutions.
The Civil-Defence convergence
India is rapidly moving towards convergence in the civil and defence MRO sectors. Although the work across both the civil and defence MROs is more or less the same, there is a wall separating the two. As a result, civil MROs are unable to harness the untapped potential, resources as well as skilled manpower from the defence arena. Realising this aviation stakeholders as well as the ministry have taken it upon themselves to bring about this convergence for the overall development of the MRO sector. On one hand, where the civil MROs in the country are suffering due to a lack of adequate facilities, infrastructure and talent, the Defence MRO has all of these in abundance.
Due to policy framework and different regulatory authorities governing the two sectors have made it difficult to bridge the gap. The defence MRO in India comes under DGAQA – Directorate General of Aeronautical Quality Assurance, under the Department of Defence Production while the civil MRO comes under DGCA – Directorate General of Civil Aviation. The working, rules and policies of both regulators are poles apart making it difficult to synergize the two sectors. Realizing this, the process of integrating the regulatory authorities into one uniform body for both- civil as well as defence MROs is under process. This will drastically change the entire picture of the Indian MRO sector.
Government’s keen interest in MRO
Even though the earlier ministers somewhat ignored India’s MRO sector, the current minister of civil aviation has a very niche interest in the MRO sector. Right since he assumed office, time and again Ram Mohan Naidu has been rooting for the Indian MRO sector. He has realized the hidden potential of the sector and the wonders it can do to the Indian economy if tapped correctly. He recently emphasized the Union government’s commitment to creating a robust environment for both domestic and international airlines to access world-class MRO facilities in India.
He has brought about some landmark changes in policy structure and taxes that will completely turn the picture of the Indian MRO system. He further went on to predict that the value of the total MRO business in India is likely to go up from $2 billion to $4 billion in the next seven years. He further encouraged new players to set up MROs across any airstrip in the country with complete assistance from the government. With complete handholding from the government, the onus now lies on aviation stakeholders, airlines, third-party MROs and airports to establish a firm and solid MRO ecosystem in the country for India’s all-round aviation progress.
Swati Ketkar is an aviation journalist and writer freelancing for various domestic and international publications. Although she covers stories across the aviation spectrum her main focus and area of expertise is MRO.