SriLankan Engineering achieves milestone with third maintenance line

SriLankan Airlines Engineering division recently commissioned its third parallel Aircraft Heavy Maintenance Line at Colombo’s Bandaranaike International 
Airport (BIA).

As the move would enable SriLankan Engineering to carry out the maintenance work on any customer’s aircraft, it would also generate more revenue for the company and more foreign exchange for the country out of the billion dollar industry.

“There are two sides. One thing, as Colombo has this facility, we don’t have to take our aircraft outside, which stops the outflow of money from the country, and the other thing is, by maintaining other aircraft, it brings foreign exchange to the country,” the airline’s officials said.

In addition to the three Heavy Maintenance Lines, SriLankan Engineering also operates one more light maintenance aircraft maintenance line for back-to-back ‘A’ checks at BIA on both widebody and narrowbody aircraft.
To share insights on the engineering side and to provide an overview on how the maintenance is carried out on aircraft, the airline recently organised a media tour. The visitors were able to observe the work carried out on an aircraft of India’s IndiGo. One of the Mihin Lanka aircraft was also under maintenance at the time of the visit.
 

SriLankan Engineering background
For past 30 years, SriLankan Airlines Engineering has been consistent with a staff strength of over 1100, according to the company.
It currently holds approvals from the Civil Aviation Authority of Sri Lanka (CAASL), European Aviation Authorities (NAAs), Civil Aviation Authority - Pakistan, Civil Aviation Authority - Qatar, General Civil Aviation Authority - United Arab Emirates, etc.
 

Regulations and procedures
SriLankan Airlines Chief Technical Officer Dinnaga Padmaperuma said that the aircraft is a fascinating thing but it is important to know the rule book 
of it.

He said as per the European regulations, any commercial passenger aircraft design must be in accordance with the criteria of European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) CS25 requirements, along with CS-E (for engines), etc.
He said the design of the aircraft must be carried out by an organisation approved under the rights and privileges of the EASA Part 21J. The manufacture must be done by an organisation approved by the EASA Part 21G.
“As an example, Airbus and Rolls Royce have the above approvals to manufacture the Airbus aircraft that SriLankan (SLA) and other airlines use. Also, on our A330 fleet, we have Rolls Royce engines,” he said.
He said when the aircraft has fulfilled all requirements and testing, the EASA and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) (USA aviation authority) will issue the Type Certificate for the model. 
When this happens, he said the authority will allow airlines in their respective countries to use them to carry fee-paying passengers in commercial aviation.

“At SLA, we follow the CAASL procedures and both our authority and SLA follow the EASA requirements. Our training school is EASA Part-147 approved to conduct training and they follow the EASA part 66 syllabi and examination methods to quality the technicians and engineers,” he said.
He said that their maintenance organisation is CAASL approved and also EAS 145 approved to reform maintenance on the Airbus A320/A330/A350 family aircraft. “Our continuous aviation side of the division follows the EASA part M style to implement airworthiness management,” he said.
 

Current status
The current fleet of the airline comprises of A330-200 (six aircraft), A330-300 (seven aircraft), A320 (six aircraft) and A321 (two aircraft). 
And it was noted that A321 (x1) - MRD, A320(x1) - MRE and A319 (x1) - MRF will be added to the UL fleet soon.

As SriLankan Engineering has gained a reputation for its expertise in all types of Airbus aircraft, it already serves the aircraft heavy maintenance requirements of Sri Lanka’s own Airbus and Mihin Lanka fleet.
It is currently expanding its capability to include Boeing 737 next generation aircraft, which are operated by many airlines flying to BIA.
Its customer airlines include IndiGo and Island Aviation of the Maldives and other airlines from the region are to join this list too.
The officials said that at present, they maintain about six aircraft for a month.

SriLankan Airlines Engineering also provides certification for other airlines flying to BIA and has operations overseas in Male, Chennai, Lahore 
and Karachi. 
Plans are in place to add Dhaka before the end of this year with further regional expansion due in 2017.
 

Challenges
Padmaperuma said that they face a lot of competition from Malaysia, Singapore, India and the Middle Eastern countries, which have many maintenance, repair and 
overhauls (MROs).

“The important thing to realise is we have a lot of challenges from the Middle Eastern airlines. They have money; they have a lot of cash cushions. We know a lot of aircraft going empty. They have six A380s going form Dubai to London. Some don’t have even 60 percent but they have that muscle power to withstand. We don’t have that. So we have to do a lot of things to get a bit of cushion. We have to be very efficient. Price wise, we have to be competitive,” he said.

“One of the gentlemen from IndiGo told me he travelled from Dubai to Barcelona and for every one passenger in Business Class there were six empty seats. They don’t care, they have the cushion to take those shots, which we don’t have,” he added.
Another aspect he highlighted was the cost. “Nothing is cheap in aviation. Each bolt that holds the engine is about US $ 7-8000,” he said.
Overall, he said that what they are trying to do from the engineering side is to reduce the cost of maintenance and ownership cost.
“(To reduce) ownership cost we want to renegotiate the leases; with regard to cost of maintenance, (we need to) to bring in more third party work, efficient suppliers and increase productivity by using different patterns,” he said.
However, brain drain seems to be a challenge, the officials justified that through this, the staff gets a lot of exposure to perform better.

“The tour is good. People go for different reasons – some for family reasons, some for just travelling. It is always good to see how others do because every organisation has pluses and minuses. I encouraged people when I was in Lufthansa to go to other companies and they always come back. It is good for the system when people do travel. Also, it’s good so juniors could take up those positions. Otherwise, because there are not many airlines in Sri Lanka, it would hit the ceiling. It is not productive for the company. It’s good to relax pressure from the company,” 
he explained.
 

Future development and projects 
Mapping out the future plans, Padmaperuma said that once the SriLankan Airlines partnership is finalised, early next year, they are planning to have the four-bay hanger. He added that many airlines have shown interest so far, such as from Pakistan.
As they have revenue of about US $ 6 million annually through the MRO, he said that they are looking forward to increasing it up to a US $ 9 
million business.

“If you put a pin on Colombo and draw a radius, you see the airlines that own 100s of aircraft. IndiGo has about 400 aircraft; Jet Airways has a couple of hundreds. They all can’t maintain those. That is enough for us to keep going and make a positive contribution for the airlines,” he said.
They also noted that they are looking forward to introduce A321 NEO aircraft and develop the EASA Part 21 capability, which is not available at the moment.
He also said that it is important to keep people working together while focusing on third party businesses and marinating their own aircraft.

“We are also implementing the Japanese 5S system under the banner slogan ‘right first-time’, to improve efficiency, reduce waste and lost man hours,” he said.
“We also need to recruit more people for the extra work we are getting, improve our facilities like the workshop facilities, have a proper engineering software and a state-of-the-art software to manage these operations. These are the investment we are looking to do,” he said.