Indonesia's Lion slowly creeping up on MRO

I was lucky enough to spend late last week having a personal tour of Indonesia Technic, the two-year old MRO business of Indonesian carrier Lion Air.

Lion Air outsources most of its heavy maintenance work to GMF AeroAsia but it does Boeing MD-82 heavy maintenance in-house at Jakarta Halim Perdanakusuma Airport.

I visited their facility near Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, where it does a lot of low-level maintenance work for MD-80s and the other aircraft in its fleet such as Boeing 737-900ERs

It is certainly not the glamorous part of the business but it is impressive that Lion Air is investing so much in its support business.

Indonesia's Director General of Civil Aviation has given Lion Technic part 145 to do limited line maintenance, limited power plant and limited airframe work. 

The facility I saw had six or seven buildings housing an assortment of maintenance activities. The most basic activity was the seat cover repair and dry-cleaning section. There is also a division that looks after wheels and breaks.

But it does do work that involves more skill. It has, for example, a section that repairs and overhauls aircraft components and a section that does non-destructive testing.

Lion Technic is still a small player in the world of MRO but I can see it growing into a very large business one day.