The world’s biggest independent CF34 maintenance provider

It’s 4 p.m. at MTU’s Ludwigsfelde location in Brandenburg. The tech­nicians are in the middle of over­hauling a CF34 engine. Almost 1.7 metric tons is resting on the as­sem­bly support frame. With pains­taking precision, MTU’s engineers dismantle the engine and inspect each part thor­oughly, where neces­sary repairing or replacing it. It quickly becomes clear that here at the Ludwigs­felde location is where the MRO expertise for the CF34, the most wide­spread and best-selling engine of its class world­wide, is concentrated.

Portfolio includes all CF34 models

The decision to locate the MRO activities for the CF34 in Ludwigs­felde was made in the year 2000. The first engines to be over­hauled arrived in Branden­burg in 2003. “From then on, the chal­lenge lay in managing the ramp-up of this new engine type, and coping with increasing numbers practi­cally from the get-go,” explains Frank Deubert from CF34 Engi­neer­ing, who has sup­ported the engine family for more than ten years. MTU’s portfolio in the mean­time includes all engine models in the CF34 family and the company is the world’s leading independent MRO provider for this engine program.

Experience from over 1,000 shop visits

In 2017, MTU Maintenance Berlin-Branden­burg cel­ebrated the 1,000th CF34 shop visit—together with represen­tatives from British Air­ways City­flyer, which owns the mile­stone engine. The British regional airline is one of more than 90 cus­tom­ers that entrust the main­tenance of their CF34 engines to MTU’s experts. According to Ludwigs­felde pro­gram manager Thomas Needham, the future prospects are also looking good: “Over 7,100 CF34 engines are currently flying world­wide. Above all the big CF34s, the CF34-8 and -10, are very suc­cess­ful in the market and therefore also play a pre­dominant role in what goes on here in the shop. We are clearly focusing on further growth in this area over the coming years.” Addi­tion­ally, the newer CF34 models are now also nearing their prime main­tenance age: the market envi­ron­ment thus remains healthy.