Lufthansa Technik has decided to locate certain engineering functions near its Budapest maintenance base in a bid to cut costs.
Budapest airport operator has disclosed that LHT will open an aircraft engineering centre in the Hungarian capital, with a staff of around 50, by year-end.
Services will include system engineering, troubleshooting and maintenance programme management for Boeing 737 operators. But the facility will also cover a range of other activities unrelated to individual aircraft types, such as engine condition monitoring, compilation of flight and reliability data, and technical documentation services.
LHT tells Flightglobal that the new engineering centre will not be located at its existing maintenance base but be established as a new, separate entity elsewhere in the airport's vicinity. Today, the engineering services in question are being conducted at LHT's maintenance base in Frankfurt.
Hamburg-headquartered LHT says "the transfer is part of our efforts for profitable growth" and that affected employees in Frankfurt will be offered retraining opportunities to take other positions within the company. The MRO specialist has launched a number of efficiency initiatives to raise competitiveness.
Parent Lufthansa will phase out its last remaining 737s by October.
Budapest airport says it was selected for the engineering centre from four gateways in central and southeastern Europe. LHT has maintenance facilities in Malta and Bulgarian capital Sofia. At the group's site in Budapest – established in 2000 – the focus is on heavy checks for 737s and Airbus A320-family aircraft.
Recruitment for the new engineering centre is to start in July.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
