Central European budget carrier Wizz Air has extended by 10 years an agreement to use Lufthansa Technik's digital services platform Aviatar.
When the service was launched in 2017, Wizz became Aviatar’s first formal customer beyond Lufthansa Group carriers.
LHT says the platform has since been selected by "a growing number of airlines".
The Budapest-headquartered budget carrier employs predictive maintenance and reliability management applications developed by LHT.
The German MRO group notes that Wizz Air will also use solutions available on Aviatar that are being provided by third parties.
LHT describes Aviatar as a "neutral" OEM-spanning platform that is independent of its own or any other MRO provider's maintenance contracts.
Earlier this year, LHT said it intended to spin Aviatar out as a standalone company and sell shareholdings to other parties, including MRO competitors.
Wizz Air head of maintenance Christian Ambiehl states: "The open and modular architecture of Aviatar, together with the strategic decision of our long-term partner Lufthansa Technik to neutrally offer access even to its competitors, makes it a unique platform.
"Competition and access to new markets have been key to Wizz Air's success in the past 14 years and our digital vision requires a neutral platform, which enables us to co-operate digitally with our MRO and technical operations partners."
Efficiencies provided by predictive maintenance will enable the airline to "grow our fleet faster than our technical operations team", Ambiehl adds.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
