MAEL celebrates Birmingham facility's first year
MAEL engineers at the facility, which opened on 26th November, 2013, have completed a variety of aircraft maintenance events and inputs in the past year, for customers including AirTanker, DHL, easyJet, Estonian Air, flybe, FlyDubai, jet2.com, Monarch, Norwegian, Thomas cook, Thomson Airways, Titan, and Twinjet.
The facility’s versatility coupled with MAEL’s breadth of engineering skill have enabled it to carry out over 210,000 hours of maintenance on aircraft ranging in size from 50 seats to over 300, including the Bombardier Q400, Embraer 175/195, A320 family, A330, Boeing 737NG, 757, 767 and 787 Dreamliner.
Highlights of the past year include maintenance on a Norwegian Boeing 787 Dreamliner (above), for which MAEL is a Boeing GoldCare provider, simultaneous maintenance on three Monarch Airlines Airbus A300 aircraft and S4C work on a Titan Airways Boeing 767.
Ian Bartholomew, Interim Managing Director of Monarch Aircraft Engineering, says: “The first of year of operations at our Birmingham facility have exceeded our plans, with maintenance for more aircraft from a wider range of operators than we had anticipated.
“In addition to the work for Monarch Airlines, our ever-increasing amount of third party maintenance for other operators now accounts for the vast majority of our operation – both in Birmingham at our other facilities in Luton and Manchester.”
Since the opening of the 110,000 sq ft state-of-the-art facility, MAEL has created jobs for over 150 skilled engineers, and this number is set to increase further in 2015 with a further intake of trainee engineers through MAEL’s renowned apprenticeship scheme.
MAEL’s Birmingham facility can accommodate almost every aircraft type in its two bays. It incorporates industry-leading design and build standards and is one of the first to have the capacity for Boeing 787 Dreamliner maintenance, with sufficient capacity for other wide body aircraft, such as the Boeing 777, 747 and Airbus A350.
It is large enough to accommodate two Boeing 777-300ER aircraft or 10 narrow-body aircraft and contains a number of component-repair and back shops. The vast building, covering around 2.5 acres is big enough to house four full size football pitches, 2400 Minis or 450 double decker buses.
