Bahrain licences VD Gulf to provide MRO services

The document enables the company to service Bakhraini-registered airliners

VD Gulf, a Sharjah, UAE-based MRO subsidiary of Russia’s Volga Dnepr Group, is expanding its reach across the Middle East region with the addition of Bahrain to its list of approved operational bases.

The company, headquartered near Sharjah International Airport, has been licenced by the Kingdom of Bahrain’s Civil Aviation Affairs (CAA) air transport regulator to perform unlimited base and line maintenance on aircraft registered in the country. The approval follows the regulator’s audit of VD Gulf’s capabilities.

The company currently holds approvals to provide aircraft MRO services in 14 countries of the wider region, including India, Turkey, Iraq, and Pakistan.
Over the past two years it has been following a strategy aimed at expanding in the Middle Eastern market with a special focus on regional operators.

MRO providers require official approval from the air transport authorities of the countries in which their customers’ relevant aircraft are registered.

VD Gulf General Director Mikhail Khoroshayev says the company’s goal is to increase the number of Middle Eastern nations able to use its services: “In the foreseeable future we are going to further expand our coverage in the region to other Middle Eastern countries.”

In 2013, VD Gulf built a 22,000-square-meter hangar at its Sharjah base. The hangar can accommodate six narrowbody (Boeing 737/Airbus A320) and two widebody (Boeing 747) aircraft simultaneously, and is equipped with special docking facilities, tools, equipment, and utilities for the maintenance of various combinations of airliner and engine types.

In a separate development, another Volga-Dnepr Group subsidiary, Volga-Dnepr Technics Moscow’s (VDTM) Aviation Training Center, has become the only Russian organization approved to provide Boeing 747-400 and 747-8 technical personnel training.

The training center was awarded a FAP 289 certificate, making it one of the first MRO providers to be approved to train engineering and technical personnel to conduct maintenance on aircraft produced by Western manufacturers.

The certificate enables VDTM to deliver training sessions for the following aircraft versions: Boeing 737-300/400/500/700/800, Boeing 747-400/-8, and Airbus A319/320/321.