British Airways’ A380 Rehab Issues Spotlight Aftermarket Struggles

LONDON—The commercial aftermarket's inability to keep up with strong demand is leaving some operators as dissatisfied with maintenance providers’ performance as they are with manufacturers’ inability to meet delivery and operational guarantees.

Andy Best, British Airways (BA) chief technology officer, said the carrier is seeing issues familiar to many carriers, such as longer turnaround times on engines and components. More troubling is the spate of problems, which Best says extends beyond simply missing promised deadlines.

“Lead times are stretching, but more importantly for me is the service delivery,” Best told MRO Europe attendees Oct. 14 here. “It's inconsistent and way short of what's needed, never mind contractually. I'm painting [with a broad] brush because we've got some people that clearly do step up, but we've got a bunch of people that don't.”

Metrics from the carrier's massive A380 refurbishment project helped illustrate Best’s point. BA recently began a major interiors overhaul designed to keep the 12-aircraft fleet—average age, 12 years, Aviation Week Fleet Discovery shows—as a long-haul cornerstone for another decade or more. But progress has been slow and frustrating, Best said.

“We have a lot of providers” on the A380 rework effort, Best said. “Ninety-three percent of those contract providers failed to deliver” on their contractual obligations, “from small providers to OEMs.”

On the powerplant front, “Our main engine providers have not provided a single engine on time per the agreement in 2025,” Best said. “Not one.” Such headaches force the airline to make hard choices, such as keeping engines on wing longer than planned and even leasing some, for example.

“We get around it, but not all the time,” he said. “We’ve got aircraft grounded ... because we haven't got those engines. We have an OEM with turn times of 700-plus days. That is an example of risk passed to the operator. That’s not sustainable.”

Long-term, the problems have prompted some supplier changes. The most highly visible was the selection of GE Aerospace GENx engines on its July 2024 order for 38 787-10s. The carrier’s other 42 787s—including 12 787-10s—are powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines. The Trent 1000 has been plagued by years of parts durability issues and related unscheduled overhauls that have grounded some affected aircraft for months at a time.

Rolls-Royce also supplies and supports the carrier’s A380 engines. While issues such as the Trent 1000 and Pratt & Whitney PW1000G are program-specific, broader aftermarket trends suggest service providers will continue to struggle in the near term. A recent RBC Capital Markets survey of more than 50 MRO providers revealed 60% consider spare parts availability and lead times as the largest factors driving aftermarket performance improvement.

“Although we believe the supply chain issues continue to improve, demand is still outpacing supply,” RBC analyst Ken Herbert wrote in an October 10 research note analyzing the survey results. “We also asked MROs about their material lead times for parts from OEMs and distributors. On a weighted average, MROs are seeing [about] 19% increase in lead times, which we found to be much higher than we expected.”

Best said that while many MRO providers can improve, operators must show similar initiative to help take pressure off the supply chain. One example is its 787 predictive maintenance effort that leans heavily on real-world data. “Over the last couple of months, every single brake change that we've done on that fleet, we predicted it,” he said. “Every one of them, when we’ve done it, has absolutely been ready to change.”

Accurate predictive models can help avoid unplanned downtime and ensure the correct parts and tooling are available before they are needed. “We can meet the aircraft on time,” Best said. “We can plan it in a certain [time] slot and not get the equipment and go to the aircraft.”