How Air Canada Can Reduce Air Transat Maintenance Costs

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Since the acceptance of Air Canada’s offer for the purchase of Transat, all sorts of disaster scenarios are circulating. The comment that comes up most often is that Air Canada will cut massively into the personnel assigned to the maintenance of Air Transat aircraft. This type of comment is based on a poor understanding of the situation at Air Transat.

Maintenance at Air Transat

Air Transat internally runs A checks only, all major C check are subcontracted. Air Transat has been outsourcing for a long time since in 2011 it had awarded a maintenance contract to Aveos. For the C check of its single-aisle aircraft, Air Transat a low volume and awards them one at the time.

For heavy maintenance of its fleet of about 20 A330, Air Transat entrusted to a company based in South America.

Maintenance at Air Canada

For the maintenance of its aircraft, Air Canada proceeds in exactly the same way as Air Transat. The difference lies rather in the volume of single-aisle appliances to maintain. According to its forecasts, Air Canada will have 47 A320 family aircraft in its fleet by the end of 2020. To this we must add 41 more from the Rouge fleet for a total of 88 Airbus A319-320s and 321s. the American company AAR which was awarded the maintenance contract in September 2017 which is valued at $ 500 million. The 10-year contract is being executed at the Trois-Rivières, Quebec and Windsor, Ontario facilities.

Air Canada currently has 10 A330s in its fleet and this number will increase to 15 by the end of 2020. These aircraft C check are done in South America.

The savings

Starting in 2022, Air Transat will operate approximately 20 A320 Family aircraft. Air Canada will then be able to add them to its contract with AAR to take advantage of the volume discount.

For the A330s, the total of the two airlines will rise to 35 from 2021. The acquisition of Transat should allow Air Canada to also save on the maintenance of its A330s.

If staff reductions are possible in the short term, but there should be no layoffs. At most, one should expect attrition.

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