Estonia’s Magnetic MRO expands its engine workshop capabilities

The new tooling expands the company's capabilities list, including the ability to perform modular maintenance and repairs on CFM56-5B and CFM56-7B engines (Magnetic MRO)

Magnetic MRO, an Estonian aircraft technical care and asset management organisation, has acquired additional tooling for its engine workshop, as a means of expanding its capabilities to allow it to provide alternative lighter and cheaper aircraft servicing solutions.

The new tooling, which has already been delivered to the company’s Tallinn engine workshop, expands the company’s capabilities list with more than 40 new services, including the ability to perform modular maintenance and repairs on CFM56-5B and CFM56-7B engines.

Included in the new capability are Fan, LPT MM, hot section modules replacements, special procedures and the partial and full replacement of HPT blades, HPT NGVs, HPT shrouds, LPT Stage 1 Vanes and others, the Chinese-owned Estonian-based company reveals in a statement.

“We have been having continued discussions about [traditional] engine shop capacities versus [simple] demands for repairs, and a number of arguments favour the major hypothesis: overcapacity,” insists Zoran Bozic, engine line maintenance business manager at Magnetic MRO.

“As long as one is a ‘box-thinker’ one may agree with this, but the real question is how many players can provide alternative solutions? We are now one of them – in the gap between the conservative (mainstream) types of service and the demand for lighter, cheaper and more efficient options. It is where we want to place ourselves and such expansion within our service spectrum allows us to do so,” says Bozic.

Although the COVID-19 outbreak has made the current situation in the aviation market grim, based on the company’s research on demand for the engine services that it is now capable to provide, will be even more attractive once the COVID-19 outbreak is passed, Bozic ventures. “Sooner or later, airplanes will start flying again and on-site engine repairs will be required. So now our challenge is to enhance the mobility of our service by an expansion of our engine team with experienced professionals,” he says.

According to Alexey Ivanov, executive sales director at Magnetic MRO, there are a number of other MRO industry trends that the company has observed and responded to. “Airlines or leasing companies will be interested in deferring expensive overhauls of their engines and may do only a minimum quick-fix to return the engines back to operation without major investments. Moreover, we see that the CFM56-5B and -7B engines are on more mature aircraft (with the oldest 20+ years) and asset owners are therefore becoming much more flexible with the repair of such engines and instead may prefer module changes and quick and cheap repairs instead of overhauls,” Ivanov adds.