India’s proud flag carrier, Air India, with their biggest MRO set up in the country serves as a One-Stop-Shop for all Engineering requirements. Apart from providing maintenance facility to almost all domestic carriers, AIESL also caters to many international Airlines. AIESL has set up its first overseas venture in Sharjah and has further expansion plans in middle east and other countries. AIESL management has a vision of becoming a significant player in the MRO field.Here are some excerpts from an exclusive interview with Mr. Jagannath, CEO AIESL.
After the first foreign MRO in Sharjah – UAE, AIESL has some big global expan-sion plans. Can you brief us about on your overseas expansion plan?
We have come a long way in the last five years to stabilise our operations and we aim to be significant player in MRO field in India and neighbouring countries.
After Sharjahand Ras-Al- haimah,AIESL is studying the market for future expan-sion in middle east where Air India and Air India Express have significant operations.We already have a pan-India presence and offera range of services spread-out at different locations making it convenient for customers to seek the locational advantage depending upon their operational requirement. Many of our shops are FAA approved and avionic shop in Delhi is also EASA approved.
Currently, within India, AIESL has facilities at Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Nagpur and Thiruvanantha-puram where, apart from servicing Air India aircraft, AIESL services planes of other airlines too.
Spice Jet was the one of the 1st, third party aircraft serviced by AIESL (Nag-pur). At present how many thirdparty airlines are already in your client list? Can you list some prominent names?As of today, almost all major domestic airlines and also some international airlines are serviced by AIESL.
We have almost 66 stations across India. Airlines like Indigo, Spice Jet, Jet Airways, Air Vistara, Go Air, Air Asia, are our clients, to name a few.
What in your opinion is your assess-ment of our professional talent to cope up with the requirement? Are we up to it?
There are about 50 training schools spread across India which provide a comprehensive 3 –year, DGCA-approved course for the aspiring aeronauti-cal engineers. However most of the training schools lack in providing the crucial practical training which is an essential part of the on-field job.
DGCA has mandated,at least 30 per cent of curriculum should include practical training on aircraft. With this view, severaltraining schools across India have signed a contract with AIESL to get hands-on experience for the field job. At our Thiruvananthapuram and Begum-pethangars we have 2 aircraft kept aside especially for studentsfor gaining hands on experience.AIESL aims at making highly skilled Engineers & mechanics by giving them training on aircraft.
Current challenges faced by AIESL?
Most aircraft operated by domestic and foreign airlines in this part of the world are leased from European lessors. These lessors insist that the aircraft that they have leased are maintained by EASA approved facility. Hence getting EASA approval to meet Lessors’ requirement is one of our biggest challenges.
AIESL has applied to EASA for getting its facilities approved to carry out maintenance.The next big challenge is to train the workforce as per the syllabus approved by both the EASA & DGCA.
The other challenge is the long list of taxes like GST, withholding tax, royalty tax, customs duty for tools, educational material.
The once symbiotic relation between OEMs and MROs have turned sour in re-cent times. How do you look at tackling the OEM demands?
The penetration of OEMs in aftermarket support has upset the MRO market. The MRO have to de-pend on OEMs for their technical support(various manuals, software)and spares. These are not made avail-able easily to MROs unless a hefty licence fee is paid, reason being the OEMs themselves have set up their MROs to service the components. Un-less the volumes justify the setting up of component MRO it is difficult to sus-tain the operation financially. Hence it is difficult to set up such MROs in India.
Another drawback for MRO in India is lack of spares, consumables, expandable that have to be imported as there is no manufacturing base in India. To set up this base it requires huge investment to purchase state of art testing facilities for fuel/hydraulic/electrical components. AIESL is willing to enter into joint ven-tures/collaborations with OEMs to bring the state-of-art facility into India.AIESL aims at building up a robust structural repair team to repair compos-ite and metal aircraft for which AIESL is in touch with OEMs to provide requisite training.
