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From Chinelo Obogo, Addis Ababa
Nigerian airlines prefer carrying out C-checks at the Ethiopian Airline Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopia capital, because of the lower cost and efficiency, it has been revealed.
During a tour of the MRO, the acting manager, sales and marketing for the facility, Henok Yazew Haile, told journalists that many Nigerian airlines prefer coming to Ethiopia because of its capacity and due to the fact that it charges are lower when compared to the western countries.
“Our MRO is approved by IATA, and our local civil aviation and we also have approval from different Africa regulatory bodies, in the middle east, Europe and America. We can perform any maintenance on our facility. We currently have an aircraft from Nigeria that we are working on and we have also done maintenance for airlines like Air Peace and Medview. We were maintaining the AirPeace 777 aircraft and have finished the maintenance and sent it back to them.
“We also have a lot of aircraft from other countries that are maintained in our facility. We currently have Tag Angola aircraft and Cameron in our hangar. We also performed a C-check on the aircraft. We are still recieving orders and in the process to maintain more airlines from Nigeria and other countries. More Nigerian airlines come here because of cost. We are cheaper than Europe or US and we are the first choice for maintenance of African airlines. We are Africans, we have to grow each other and support each other.
“There is no specific time to complete C-check as it depends on the work scope. For example, for an average aircraft it takes between 30 to 50days to do maintenance, depending on the work scope that we receive from the customers.
“We have a 737 and 787 hangar and we have the capability of repairing airframe, engine and components of the aircraft. We do Q400, 777, 787, A350, Q400 and we also have base maintenance and line maintenance capability,” he said.
On the impact of COVID-19 on your maintenance, he said, “COVID-19 affected all the business sectors, most customers a
were unable to come to our facility because of the lockdown in the country but we were working through the situation. We had aircraft in the hangar for maintenance before the lockdown. We did not face any delays because we have creative management systems. So, what we did was we received the aircraft, maintened it and sent it back by using different mechanism but the pandemic affected out business.”
