Air India Engineering Services Limited (AIESL), a subsidiary of Air India has been permitted by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation to provide maintenance, repair, overhaul (MRO) and also testing of aircraft, engines and components for the Air India fleet.

The MRO will not only service Air India’s present fleet of 125 aircraft which is likely to grow in the future but will also look to garner a major share of the business in India and from abroad, including Government contracts.

This MRO will have maintenance facilities spread all over India to take care of line/base maintenance requirements of the aircraft, repair, overhaul and testing of engines/APUs apart from inspection, bench tests and repairs of components that include mechanical, electrical and avionics components. Hangar facilities will be made available at all major airports including Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Thiruvananthapuram for it to perform these tasks.

Besides, the new MRO facility at Nagpur which Air India is in the process of developing will now be operated by AIESL.

As part of organisational restructuring, the engineering organisation of the airline was hived off from Air India as a separate MRO to a fully owned subsidiary company, to provide maintenance services for Air India’s fleet as well as that of other customer aircraft, engines and components.

The operationalisation of this new company was part of the financial restructuring and turnaround plan of AI which was approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs in April 2012.

AIESL was been made operational since February 2013. AIESL will now have a right to use the engineering facilities including hangers which were earlier in the possession of Air India.

As part of the restructuring plan the existing trained manpower and equipment will stand transferred to AIESL.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW