Last month Russian aircraft maintenance specialist Volga-Dnepr Gulf (VDG) inaugurated a new $26.4 million hangar at Sharjah International Airport, a sign that the emirate is assuming an increasingly strategic role in its global network of maintenance bases.
The scale of the facility is certainly impressive. At 22,000 square metres in area, it can accommodate up to six narrow-body aircraft, or two Boeing 747s or two An-124-100s (the worlds largest commercial freighter) simultaneously. Its business horizons are wide too - the company says it will be looking to serve airlines and aircraft owners throughout the Middle East, South Asia, the Russian Republics and North Africa from Sharjah, whose own credentials as a top regional aviation hub are growing.
At the inauguration VDGs senior vice president Sergey Shklyanik said the Sharjah facility joins a network of nine approved maintenance bases around the world, and was the culmination of a strategic decision taken by the company in 2007 to extend its aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) business in the United Arab Emirates.
Due to experience, it has proved very beneficial for operators to have maintenance bases located in their route networks and operation areas, he told the invited guests.
Providing a full range of maintenance services, the operators reduce their expenditures for transfers, AC downtime and maintain the required level of flight safety, he said.
The new hangar is in fact the latest and arguably most significant step on a long road which started when Viktor Sherin, VDGs managing director, first arrived in Sharjah in 1996. Speaking to The Gulf at his office shortly before the ceremony, he recalled how Volga-Dnepr Airlines became the first Russian company to establish a line maintenance base in the UAE that same year.
I opened the first branch together with five of my people. We came here carrying everything ourselves - tools, equipment and so on and started a flight maintenance base for Russian aircraft.
The idea for a maintenance base for Russian aircraft in the Gulf came from a project mooted a year earlier by the Russian and UAE governments to set up a maintenance and spares operation for Russian-manufactured aircraft with Gulf Aircraft Maintenance Company (GAMCO), the forerunner of Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies.
Russian and Ukrainian-built aircraft were proving to be very good operationally - and very popular - in the region and North Africa, Sherin explains. But there were no spares available locally and the difficult procedures meant it was taking as long as five or six months to get spares and turn around warranty replacement parts from the manufacturers. So we planned to set up a maintenance and spares operation in Abu Dhabi, he continues.
However, that particular route proved difficult and so Volga-Dnepr decided to pursue the venture alone in Sharjah, which was setting itself up as a regional air cargo hub and an increasingly popular destination and technical stop for airlines operating Russian aircraft into and through the Middle East.
Sherin hit the road running and within its first year VDG had been awarded maintenance service certificates for Antonov An-12 and Ilyushin IL-76 aircraft types, successfully completing its first maintenance operations on both aircraft types.
The business grew smoothly for the next decade and in 2006 VDG embarked on the construction of a new facility for modular engine repairs as revenues hit $10 million and the company was undertaking as many as 140 C checks - a maintenance check typically undertaken by a large aircraft roughly every year - on Russian aircraft each year.
In 2008, VDG was absorbed into Volga-Dnepr Technics as the master brand for the groups MRO network for both western and Russian aircraft, and within two years had opened branches to perform line maintenance for Antonov and Ilyushin aircraft at Fujairah International Airport and Dubais Al Maktoum International Airport.
Sharjah, however, assumes a pivotal role in VDGs global network. Sherin is fulsome in his praise for both Sharjah International Airport Authority and Sharjah Airport International Free Zone (SAIF Zone) Authority, noting extensive modifications taking place at the airport which include a second 4,000 metre runway, designed for the Airbus A380 superjumbo, which is expected to be completed this year.
SAIF Zone is equally important in offering flexibility and long-lease arrangements that have, he says, given Sherin and VDG the confidence to invest more than $50 million in facilities and services in the emirate over the past 17 years.
Everything we do is under the responsibility and authority of SAIF Zone and Sharjah Airport. We have an excellent relationship with both with lots of communication and support, he states.
Sherin insists there were strong commercial reasons to press ahead with the latest Sharjah facility.
Our group operates a lot of aircraft through the Middle East - with Volga-Dnepr Airlines, AirCargo Germany and AirBridgeCargo we have our own fleet of more than 30 aircraft, many of them western-manufactured, so we needed a big hangar to service them properly as they operate through Sharjah.
Also as everybody knows many of the Russian aircraft were built in the Soviet era and so they are getting very old and the quantity in service is reducing every year - for example the GCAA [Russias civil aviation authority] has given orders to stop operating the AN-12 for safety reasons. They are being replaced by newer western models.
So two years ago we started taking on people who have good experience of western aircraft and now we have an international team of maintenance engineers and technicians from UK, Germany, Morocco, Bulgaria as well as our employees from Russia and the Russian Republics.
The outlook for C check business looks encouraging, says Phil Lawes, VDGs base maintenance manager.
The [Boeing] 747400 is now 20-plus years old so we seeing a growing market in 2014 for B747-400s coming in for heavy maintenance.
Meanwhile a lot of MROs are moving on to [maintenance for] the B777, and A330 and A340 and leaving a huge gap for the B747-400 and this is where VDG will come in and snap them up. Apparently you have to queue in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia if you have a B747-400 and there is only a little slot of maybe two or three weeks to get it in. If the aircraft is late the slot is goneand we have a big hangar, he explains.
Up to now nobody has been doing a C check or an A check inside a hangar here in the UAE, says Sherin. For example we have heard of one company flying to Indonesia for a C check. In future they will come here, he says, confidently.
Our marketing department has identified 30 aircraft fleets based nearby who are operating more than 80 aircraft through the UAE and mostly through Sharjah because it is such a regional cargo hub, Sherin continues.
Another area of interest for VDG in the future is heavy maintenance for the fast-growing low cost airlines in the region who do not want to invest millions in MRO facilities.
Low cost airlines are based on buying third party services. If you build your own MRO base it is no longer low cost, he says pragmatically.
Further down the line Sherin sees opportunities in the private and corporate jet market but for the moment he is focusing on building VDGs core business.
We now have some customers who want to park their VIP jets inside and ask for some daily and weekly maintenance. It is no problem for us, he says.
VDG could also be a beneficiary of the eastward shift of C check maintenance by European carriers like Lufthansa. The German airline giant is said to be looking at performing only A checks at home, where skilled manpower can up 100 euros an hour.
However, Sherin sees his natural markets as being the wider Middle East and Indian sub-continent, Russia and the Russian republics. Africa is also particularly interesting, partly because of legacy business from locations such as Libya and Sudan which have historically been large operators of Russian aircraft, and also because there is no significant MRO centre north of Ethiopia.
Ours is the only base has everything for Russian aircraft so we are getting everything from Libya, Sudan and Yemen up to D Check including design bureau services, he says.
Now we have 250 people delivering approximately 200,000 man hours per year but with the new hangar we will need to plan for 400,000 man hours per year, Sherin explains. This year we will have 60 to 70,000 man hours on the B747-400 and B747 classics to go with 140,000 man hours for Russian aircraft, he says, setting the scene for what promises to be a busy future for VDG and Sharjah.
