Ethiopian Airlines is set to invest on its Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) center in order to meet the growing demand of the Airline itself and also render more third-party work.

Vice President of the Center, Zemene Nega, noted Ethiopian is going to make substantial investment in its MRO facilities. “We are doing third-party work. But we want to grow our third party business. As we speak now we are building three maintenance hangars”, he explained.

According to him the first of these three constructions taking place is going to be completed in three months time. But a year and a half is needed to complete the other two. “We will do more third-party business when these hangars are completed,” he added.

During the 2013/2014 fiscal year Ethiopian Airlines’ MRO generated 483 Million Birr from third party maintenance service. Its plan is to get this figure to 10 Billion Birr by the year 2025.

According to The Reporter, Ethiopian’s MRO center is working to build its engine and component maintenance capacity. The airline invested U.S. $ 21 Million aiming to develop the CFM engine overhaul capacity. Zemen explained the Center successfully maintained 10 CFM engines so far.

CFM engines are products of CFM International, a joint venture company established by General Electric (GE) and the French Snecma .

Ethiopian’s CFM maintenance center is recognized by CFM International, the Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority and the US Federal Aviation Administration.

Source: The Reporter