In Recovering Market, Ameco Continues Progress On Several Fronts

Credit: Ameco Beijing

In September of this year, Ameco Beijing became the 10th member of the GTF MRO network. The Air China-Lufthansa Technik joint venture will repair the PW1100G-JM powering A320neo family from its engine shop in Beijing.

By late July, Chinese domestic flight stood at about 10,000 per day, versus roughly 2,000 per day at the depth of the virus crisis, according to RadarBox.

Though China’s international flying has not recovered as strongly as domestic operations, the increase in aircraft movements means a strong recovery in demand for maintenance, which in turn is enabling Chinese MROs to enhance services.

One of these companies making progress is Beijing-based Ameco, which saw encouraging signs on several fronts. First, the MRO completed its first inspection of Trent 1000 intermediate-pressure compressor rotors 1 and 2 under remote guidance form experts at Rolls-Royce.

Since Boeing 787s were first put into service with Air China, co-owner of Ameco, these inspections have always been provided by a Rolls on-wing support team. Early in 2020, due to the outbreak of COVID-19, Rolls offered remote technical training to Ameco staff and now has guided the staff in doing the inspection. 

On a more mundane but useful front, Ameco has also done its first fading and painting of a Boeing 777-300ER. Compared with a 777-200, the -300 is 10 meters longer, and its painting area 200 square meters larger.

Due to these differences in size and differences in nose, main landing gear and engines, Ameco’s ladders had to be adjusted. Its painting staff worked closely with the engineering department, formulated a new work process and optimized production. The MRO expects to paint three more -300ERs this year.

Looking to the future, in early July, Ameco completed all tasks for FAA maintenance certificate integration and obtained a new air agency certificate from FAA.

The MRO says this is the first important maintenance certificate it has obtained from international regulators since it obtained its first multiple certificates unification certificate from the Civil Aviation Authority of China in May, 2019.

It took a year and a half for Ameco to integrate the FAA certificate and, due to COVID-19, the MRO had to adapt its integration plan. The FAA also made adjustments, doing verification audits and reviews of Ameco capabilities at Beijing and Chengdu by remote video. Ameco expects the integration of its FAA certificate will enable it to further expand its international business.

Finally, in early July Ameco launched its new SAP HANA system, a leading database management system that stores and retrieves data and can perform advanced analytics, including predictive analytics, spatial data processing, text analytics, text search, streaming analytics and graph data processing.

The implementation took a year and a half for preparation, planning, system design, development, implementation, process testing and training. Ameco expects HANA will improve many aspects of its commercial and technical operations.