GE Aerospace has committed $10 million to enhancing its maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) facilities in Dubai, UAE, and Doha, Qatar. This outlay, over a two-year period from 2024 and 2025, targets tooling, equipment, infrastructure, and training expansions at the GE Aerospace On Wing Support (OWS) bases.
PC: Aviation 360
Expansion of the workforce will be by 30% at these facilities, while other investment options in the region will be explored. The improvements will benefit local airlines by enhancing their capacity and operational efficiency while strengthening the aviation ecosystem within the region. The announcement was made during MRO Middle East.
Aziz Koleilat, President and CEO, Middle East, Türkiye, and CIS for GE Aerospace, pointed to the importance of engine maintenance to fulfill growth aspirations of regional airlines. He said extending MRO enables GE Aerospace to service even more engines while enhancing their performance, thus being in sync with customer needs at a very critical time for the industry.
The investment will expand the OWS facilities’ maintenance capabilities on the CFM LEAP engine by allowing it to carry out durability upgrades, module-level disassembly, and hot-section repairs. Improvements will assist airlines in minimizing downtime and enhancing operational flexibility. The LEAP engine is manufactured by CFM International, a joint venture of GE Aerospace and Safran Aircraft Engines.
A very critical part of this investment is training. Additional personnel as well as training modules, including a fully equipped training engine, will speed up OWS facilities’ employee certification processes. This shall ease the onboarding of new hires and empower them to become effective operational contributors more quickly.
Alex Henderson, Global On Wing Support Leader for GE Aerospace, said the company is committed to providing support for its customers in the Middle East. “As supply chain problems continue to challenge the whole world, MRO capability expansion will provide GE Aerospace with the means to meet escalated demand and derive greater value for airlines in the region.”
This initiative forms part of GE Aerospace’s recently announced $1 billion global MRO spending program set to commence in 2024. Under this scheme, GE Aerospace desires to establish the appropriate capability and operational performance of its facilities to meet increasing demand for services around the GE Aerospace and CFM engines.
Flight Deck, GE Aerospace’s proprietary lean operating model that incorporates Safety Management System and Quality Management System to drive continuous improvement, will be implemented at the MRO sites. Through these inefficiencies, the company’s key focus will be to address them to improve safety, quality, and service delivery.
Currently, more than 20 airlines in the Middle East, Türkiye, and CIS operate over 750 LEAP-1A and LEAP-1B engines. This investment also prepares GE Aerospace’s facilities for the GE9X engine-the biggest and most powerful commercial jet engine that will power the Boeing 777X. The Middle East has a leading number of GE9X engine orders worldwide.
