LONDON – Swiss-based AMAC Aerospace AG, a company specialising in aircraft refurbishment and maintenance is bullish about the ‘Bizliner’ market despite the patchy recovery of the aviation industry.
Bizliners are airliners, like the Boeing 737s being converted for private use. Boeing BBJs and Airbus ACJs are known as bizliners.
AMAC Aerospace, based in Basel Switzerland is seeing an upswing in refurbishing and the maintenance of bizliners.
The company is witnessing a 20% increased demand for such services, where a widebody Boeing BBJ787 and three narrowbody VIP aircraft are currently under work at AMAC’s facility in Basel.
This has kept the company busy throughout the 1st Quarter of 2022.
In the past calendar year, AMAC has included a part of ACJ neos being redelivered after 8.5 months of careful refurbishment.
AMAC’s group COO Bernd Schramm said the customer was delighted amid meeting tight deadlines.
AMAC Aerospace is taking big leaps, taking in large body bizliners.
As we speak, the retrofitting of a BBJ787 by the Swiss company is gaining pace, and the company is now adding ACJ350s and more Boeing Dreamliners into its OEM-approved (Original Equipment Manufactures) completions capabilities.
This signals that more wide-bodies bizliners will be completed and maintained at AMAC. Schramm stated that completing such widebodies isn’t easy as one may think, especially for the interiors on these aircraft.
He said: “cooperation with the manufacturer is much more intense because you don’t have all the engineering data.”
“That requires a bit of adaptation of procedures, and more effort than the traditional [aluminum] aircraft, like the B777, A330, or B737.” Despite the complexity of transforming bizliners, demand from customers continues to grow exponentially.
Impressively AMAC redelivered a Boeing BBJ 747-8i from its completion center last October.
This signifies the ambitions and strength of the company as a whole. Schramm also mentioned that AMAC has been the centre of excellence of 747 BBJs, and at a certain point last year, AMAC oversaw four, VIP747s, owned by head-of-state or by family offices.
This was half the world’s fleet of VIP 747-8is operated by such owners.
The completion company faced headwinds well before the pandemic. The 737 MAX groundings did erode trust from customers with one cancellation on the BBJ MAX 9, but one is also in progress at AMAC’s facility in Basel.
Schramm expressed optimism from consumers about the MAX aircraft: “Our customers all have trust in the aircraft”. “They even ordered new Maxs after the grounding.”
This further adds optimism for AMAC in receiving work orders on the MAX aircraft.
To accommodate further growth for completions and maintenance of ‘bizliners’.
The Basel-based company opened Hangar no.5, solely dedicated to large-cabin business jet maintenance and refurbishment. The new facility can cater to up to seven wide-body jets at the same time.
The company might be experiencing growth, but, supply chain issues will certainly disrupt redelivering schedules, Schramm stated:
“Decisions about systems and materials will have to be made much earlier in the process of completion because the lead time for material availability is becoming a bigger issue.”
AMAC is poising to benefit from growing demands of bizliners, as they will require constant interior upgrading and maintenance check-ups.
