Dana Air plans to set up MRO facility

• MROs would drop maintenance cost by 50% – COO

With the escalating cost of aircraft maintenance in foreign countries, domestic Carrier, DanaAir has indicated plans to set up a Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility in the Country.

The Airline’s Chief Operating Officer (COO)and Accountable Manager, Obi Mbanuzuo, who dropped the hint in an exclusive interview with ‘Timenews reporter’ stressed that maintenance of airplanes locally would cut down domestic airlines cost of operations by 50 per cent.

According to him, Nigeria has 100 per cent technical expertise to carry out heavy checks of aircraft, pointing out that the bulk of the money spent on aircraft maintenance outside the shores of Nigeria goes into manpower.

He said: “In fact the meeting we’re about to have now is to discuss Dana’s plan to open a MRO, initially we have MRO for our own aircraft.

“For technical expertise I will say 100 percent; in Nigerian we have the technical expertise to carry out heavy checks of aircraft. “As I speak with you, today Dana Air can carry out a ‘C’ check on our aircraft, we can; we have expertise, we have the staff, we have knowledgeable people, a lot of our engineers have worked previously in MROs around the world.

“We don’t have the MRO present but we have the knowledge and capability to do it which is why we now work towards establishing our own MRO.So the question of capability is yes,we do have that.” Mbanuzuo lamenting the exorbitant cost of maintenance overseas owing to manpower disclosed that just flying the aircraft abroad for a check one way costs about $15,000 plus flight charges of about$2,000.

He therefore noted that if indigenous carriers would domicile maintenance of their fleet here in Nigeria cost would be reducedbyatleast50per cent because the accrued cost from flying to overseas, flight charges and manpower would have been cut off leaving the cost of spare parts which is the same globally.

“Right now we fly our aircraft abroad for checks; just flying the aircraft abroad one way costs about $15,000 and flight charges may be about $2,000 and the airplane goes there for a month, six weeks or eight weeks in some cases. “Then the technician abroad earns four to five times what somebody in Nigeria will earn so manpower cost is the main thing that makes the charge very high.

“But if we domicile all that here in Nigeria, yes the technicians will be here in Nigeria but the manpower cost is lower. You remember how China became the workshop of the world through lower cost of man power.

“So the biggest thing that will reduce cost here for Nigerian airlines is the fact that that we’re not spending money the more flying the aircraft up and down there because just flying the aircraft there cost within $20,000 and bringing it back cost another $20,000, then the cost of that heavy (‘C’) check is greatly reduced because manpower cost has also gone.

“The spare parts they will change over there and the spare parts that will be changed here are the same, the cost will be very similar, no problem but then a lot of the work in a ‘C’ check is the cost of the engineer going there and doing some things on tightening and bolting and testing things.  It’ll reduce half the cost by having it done here,” the COO explained.

He further explained: “There are different kinds of ‘C’checks, let’s assume my aircraft is new, after two years it will do first of all a one ‘C’ which is a very simple ‘C’ check. “After another two years it does a two ‘C’ which is a real check, then it goes that way up till to may be 15 years when it does the real heavy one called the ‘D’ check.

“Each of those checks increasingly gets more complex and therefore more hours are spent and more time; more hours, man hours are spent and that is cost. So, a ‘D’ check is far more expensive than one ‘C’ check.”