Tiger moves another step closer

The Australian

John Holland Aviation Services is about to score its first big contract under new ownership, after Tiger Airways signed a memorandum of understanding to get aircraft inspections and maintenance on its Airbus A320s done at the former Ansett engineering facilities in Melbourne.

JHAS, which acquired the Ansett operations from administrators KordaMentha earlier this year, will provide Tiger with overnight and line maintenance.

The decision will initially add 20 jobs to the Melbourne facility, which has already seen its workforce grow from 130 permanent employees to more than 200.

But it has the potential to add many more if Tiger follows through on expectations it will quickly grow its Australian operations.

The start-up begins operations later this year with five aircraft but has indicated it will add aircraft if demand warrants and has up to 50 A320s on order. Chief executive Tony Davis has said he could see up to 30 aircraft flying in Australia.

The work at Melbourne Airport will be supported by other JHAS branches in other ports serviced by Tiger. The maintenance provider will also give logistics support for A320 parts and says it will offer the biggest stock of A320 spares in the region.

JHAS believes the contract will help it attract additional work from other airlines. It already does work for Virgin Blue and Jetstar, but is keen to expand.

“The business is growing about 50 per cent per annum,” said JHAS director Andrew Henderson. “We’re pretty happy with that rate and, to be frank, whether we could really cope with much more than that would be questionable.

“Tiger’s a great contract to win because we can grow comfortably alongside them. It’s not like they need us to hit it with 300 people from day one, which would probably stress us initially.”

Mr Henderson said a flexible industrial relations agreement involving annualised salaries allowed JHAS to remain competitive as well as cope with the cyclical nature of the aviation maintenance and repair industry.

He said the facility would also compete for the heavier maintenance checks, although these were still some years away. The Tiger contract would help attract other customers.

It hoped to build scale and use its flexible working regime to prove that Australia could be a competitive option for heavy maintenance.

The distance to competing Asian maintenance facilities and the cost of ferrying aircraft also gave it an advantage in narrow body maintenance. But how successful it would be in terms of wide-body heavy maintenance would depend on the attitude of the airlines and where they wanted their maintenance done.