This article is published in Aviation Week & Space Technology and is free to read until Jul 27, 2024. If you want to read more articles from this publication, please click the link to subscribe.
Lotams plans to receive its first heavy maintenance aircraft at its new facility in Rzeszow in the second half of 2025.
The commercial aftermarket of Central and Eastern Europe is operating at a steady level, in line with the wider market recovery. Passenger traffic has picked up considerably over the past two years. Even so, the region was heavily affected by Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and experienced inflationary pressures alongside soaring energy costs, though these have since calmed. Reflecting global trends, MRO demand is outstripping supply in a region with scarce slot availability, mostly in airframe maintenance.
A good illustration of the environment is Poland, estimated by Aviation Week Network to have the largest MRO market in the region, with a $368.5 million value for 2024. The country is home to strong domestic MROs, and some of Europe’s biggest airlines have built maintenance footprints there.
One domestic company looking to tackle the capacity challenge is LOT Aircraft Maintenance Services (Lotams), which has its primary maintenance operation at Warsaw Chopin Airport.
“It is not surprising to see a lack of slots, as this is common in the market—and every customer tries to secure slots and be ahead of others,” Lotams CEO Aleksandra Juda says. She notes that customers are submitting requests to the MRO much earlier than before. “We have many cases where airlines, having no work-packs prepared and not knowing what else they want to do with the slot, pay the hangar reservation fee 8-10 months in advance just to have a slot secured,” she says.
High MRO demand from operators is driving these moves. “Currently we have 10 heavy maintenance lines where we perform 10 checks at the same time, but the requests we get exceed our maintenance capacity by 2-3 times,” Juda says, adding that for base maintenance, the company already was fully booked for the 2024-25 winter season by the start of this year.
Juda notes that the MRO provider has increased its production capacity to 1.2 million labor hours per year from around 600,000. “Over the past two years we have doubled the number of service slots from five to 10, but it is still not enough,” she says, stating that Lotams performs some maintenance checks and minor maintenance on the apron outside the hangar.
“Despite adapting to the dynamically changing MRO market, we are not able to accommodate all interested carriers,” she continues. “For example, to maximize our performance, we use engine shelters to replace the engines on Boeing 787 aircraft so we do not have to cover a slot.”
In the long term, Lotams intends to expand its physical presence in Poland. Last year, it announced plans to construct a new hangar at Rzeszow-Jasionka Airport in the southeast of the country. The structure, scheduled to receive its first aircraft for heavy maintenance in the latter half of 2025, will be able to fit two widebodies simultaneously or five narrowbodies. The project includes a maintenance hangar with almost 13,000 m² (140,000 ft.²) of usable area, a pre-hangar apron, a workshop and a building housing technical, social and office facilities. Juda envisages the investment at Rzeszow remedying some of Lotams’ capacity constraints.
For several years, Poland has been a designated location for several airlines looking to ramp up in-house maintenance. In May, Irish low-cost carrier (LCC) Ryanair confirmed the opening of a second MRO facility in Wroclaw, operated by its Wroclaw Aircraft Maintenance Services subsidiary. Through an investment of around €25 million ($27 million), the additional hangar will allow the airline to service four Boeing 737s simultaneously while creating 300 new jobs.
In addition, LCC Wizz Air will lease a fourth hangar at Katowice Airport to carry out maintenance on its fleet of Airbus A320neo-family aircraft. The newly constructed facility will commence operations in January 2026.
Full engine overhaul capability still is developing in the region, and Poland will see that ramp up in the next few years. Jasionka-based EME Aero, a joint venture between Lufthansa Technik and MTU Aero Engines focusing on Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan engines, began operating in 2020 and is targeting full operational readiness by 2026. EME Aero aims to service more than 450 engines annually.
Meanwhile, XEOS, an engine MRO located in Sroda Slaska near Wroclaw, commenced operations in 2019. The joint venture between GE Aerospace and Lufthansa Technik plans to nearly double its workforce to 100 people as it ramps up for its first CFM International Leap 1B engine induction later this year.
