Iberia Analyzes In-House Airbus A350 Base Maintenance

MADRID—Iberia is analyzing bringing in-house Airbus A350 base maintenance as its widebody fleet continues to grow.

“We are now analyzing whether to include the A350 to our capacity. But this is still under evaluation,” Natalia Martínez del Río, Iberia Airframe Services Director, told Aviation Week recently in Madrid. Iberia’s further growth will happen mostly through widebody aircraft, such as the A350.

“I hope that early next year we have the final decision,” Martínez del Río says. “We estimate that the preparation for a new capacity in the heavy maintenance can take up to around one-year-and-a-half.”

According to data from CAPA-Centre for Aviation, Iberia operates 23 Airbus A350-900s, plus eight aircraft on order. The first A350 flight for Iberia took place in 2017, and the oldest aircraft has already been through the necessary six-year maintenance checks.

Current base maintenance at the Iberia Madrid MRO facility is carried out for all Airbus A319/320/321ceo and A320/321neo family aircraft, the recently introduced A321XLR, and the A330-200/300s.

“We have around 1,000 employees in base maintenance,” she says. In the largest facility in Madrid, Iberia MRO employs 750 people and 250 in Barcelona. “We produce one million man-hours per year,” Martínez del Río says.

Besides Iberia, the Madrid MRO facility mainly services airline members of the International Airlines Group (IAG) including Level, Aer Lingus and British Airways.

The base maintenance for a 12-year check on an A330 includes 20,000 working hours and takes around 40 days. “During the winter season, we do 180 to 200 base-maintenance checks,” she says.

“The majority of Iberia’s MRO base maintenance business happens in six, seven months, where we have to cover the costs for the full year,” she says, adding that the seasonality is becoming more extreme. This is linked with the current situation based on high demand and low availability of new aircraft. “This creates stress on the situation,” Martínez del Río says.

The base-maintenance winter season in Europe begins in September; the full peak arrives in October and lasts until March or April, mainly related to Easter, and then the workload goes down again, Martínez del Río explained.