Happy 40th anniversary - MTU Maintenance

Time to celebrate! 40th anniversary and 20,000th MTU Maintenance shop visit! The celebration was attended by local politicians including Stephan Weil, Minister President of Lower Saxony, MTU executives, employees present from the start and current apprentices. “This is a landmark occasion for MTU Maintenance,” says Reiner Winkler, Chief Executive Officer, MTU Aero Engines AG. “Forty years ago, we identified a growing trend in commercial aviation and strategically entered the maintenance business.” The first engine to go through the facility was a CF6-50 engine from Hapag-Lloyd in 1981. This program ran within the group right up until June 2019, when the last CF6-50 left MTU Maintenance’s Canadian facility in Vancouver.

“We’ve gone from just a single engine type in the early 1980s to having the largest portfolio worldwide with around 30 commercial aero engines,” Michael Schreyögg, Chief Program Officer, MTU Aero Engines says. MTU Maintenance’s portfolio ranges from helicopter engines and the popular  V2500 to the large GE90-115B widebody engine. Network capacity stands at over 1,100 shop visits per year today. “In fact, we just completed our 20,000th shop visit across the group. A V2500 from our partner IAE that left the Hannover facility at the end of November,” he adds.

Holger Sindemann, Managing Director at the Hannover facility and SVP MRO Operations for the entire MTU Maintenance network also reflects back to the beginning. “We started with around 200 employees. Now, more than 2,400 employees work here in Langenhagen, and we have a total of well over 5,000 MTU Maintenance employees worldwide – and growing. They are the backbone of our success and I want to take this occasion to express my thanks to them.”

Future growth

With this extensive history behind it, MTU Maintenance will continue to grow in coming years: by 50 percent in the next five to be exact. The Hannover facility, with its 35,000 square meters plus logistic center and two test cells, is adding a new complex of around 22,000 square meters by 2020.

Furthermore, a new logistics center was opened at MTU Maintenance Berlin-Brandenburg in June 2019, where a resulting reorganization of the shop will create 30 percent more capacity. Ground was recently broken on a 50 percent expansion at MTU Maintenance Zhuhai, the second in the company’s 15-year history, which will take capacity to 450 shop visits by 2021. The LEAP program was also introduced here in September 2019. Additionally, MTU Maintenance Canada is moving into a new facility that will expand capacity by 60 percent, and is in the process of introducing the mature CF6-80C2 program into its portfolio. Further, Airfoil Services Sdn. Bhd., a joint venture with Lufthansa Technik is also being expanded by 5,200 square meters.

Alongside this expansion at existing locations, EME Aero is being constructed specifically for the geared turbofan family in Poland and will work up to a capacity of 400 shop visits per year. Additionally, a new green-field repair site, MTU Maintenance Serbia is in planning for 400,000 repair hours to meet the growing demand for engine component repairs worldwide from 2022.

“Our customers greatly appreciate the comprehensive portfolio of services, flexibility for induction  throughout the network and the high degree of reliability they have come to expect from MTU Maintenance,” Winkler says. “The volume of orders in 2019 will exceed six billion U.S. dollars. This is a fantastic basis from which to enter into the next 40 years.”