Tailored engine solutions for the Middle East

The Mid­dle East is home to the world’s tallest build­ing, biggest mall and nu­mer­ous con­struc­tion pro­jects such as the Jubail II, the world’s largest civ­il en­gi­neer­ing pro­ject. In fact, when it comes to mega pro­jects, the Mid­dle East prac­ti­cal­ly in­vent­ed the term.

The past year has been chal­leng­ing for the re­gion in terms of avi­a­tion: in 2018, seat growth slowed to on­ly two per­cent among the “Gulf Three”, the mega car­ri­ers Emi­rates, Eti­had and Qatar, ac­cord­ing to mar­ket in­tel­li­gence provider CA­PA. Still, the re­gion is the most am­bi­tious in the world. CA­PA re­ports that al­though the world’s small­est avi­a­tion re­gion, with on­ly 1,650 air­craft in ser­vice as of be­gin­ning Jan­u­ary 2019, the Mid­dle East has the high­est or­ders to fleet-in-ser­vice ra­tio world­wide. Or­ders from the re­gion cur­rent­ly com­prise 1,509 air­craft.

Regional presence

“This is a key re­gion for MTU Main­te­nance both now and in the fu­ture and we sup­port our cus­tomers with so­lu­tions across the life­cy­cle–from phase-in to phase-out,” says Sa­mi Ben-Kraiem, Vice Pres­i­dent Mar­ket­ing & Sales, Mid­dle East & South­east Asia, MTU Main­te­nance. “We have over 20 cus­tomers in the re­gion and are plan­ning to open an MTU of­fice in the Mid­dle East in the very near fu­ture to re­in­force our cus­tomer prox­im­i­ty.”

Dedicated solutions

“En­gine trend mon­i­tor­ing has re­al­ly proven it­self in the Mid­dle East­ern mar­ket,” says Ben-Kraiem. “We’re see­ing much more sta­ble on-wing times with cus­tomers us­ing our in­de­pen­dent ser­vice. And there is the added ben­e­fit that mul­ti­ple en­gines with­in a sin­gle fleet can be in­cor­po­rat­ed, such as GE90, CFM56 and V2500. This, in com­bi­na­tion with our ex­per­tise as an ex­pe­ri­enced MRO, means we can unique­ly sup­port our cus­tomers and get the best out of their en­tire fleets.”

These ser­vices are com­ple­ment­ed by re­pairs specif­i­cal­ly tai­lored to harsh en­vi­ron­ments, such as CMAS (cal­ci­um-mag­ne­sium-alu­minum sil­i­cates) Re­sis­tant Ther­mal Bar­ri­er Coat­ing and ER­COat^eco (ero­sion-re­sis­tant coat­ing for HPC air­foils), which re­duces scrap rates, im­proves the dura­bil­i­ty of the hard­ware and re­duces the SFC (fu­el con­sump­tion) of the en­gines. “Such re­pairs are a very ef­fec­tive way to help op­er­a­tors com­bat high ma­te­r­i­al costs and con­sid­er­ably im­prove en­gine on-wing times,” says Ben-Kraiem.

MTU Main­te­nance is al­so see­ing great in­ter­est in leas­ing so­lu­tions, in par­tic­u­lar for ded­i­cat­ed sup­port in harsh en­vi­ron­ments. In fact, some of MTUs cus­tomers have even man­aged re­duce their own spare lev­el re­quire­ment to ze­ro thanks to MTU’s sup­port as their long-term MRO provider, ac­cord­ing to Ben-Kraiem. “And that is in a re­gion where 10 per­cent spares are high­ly rec­om­mend­ed,” he adds.

“With re­li­able MRO so­lu­tions, a unique ETM tool, high-tech re­pairs and leas­ing sup­port, MTU Main­te­nance is ide­al­ly placed to serve air­lines and lessors from the Mid­dle East,” Ben-Kraiem sum­ma­rizes. “We’re see­ing a marked trend to­wards fleet man­age­ment, and as the en­gine ex­perts in this field, MTU is ex­cit­ed to help its cus­tomers in the re­gion in this re­gard.”