A 15-year deal between Edmonton-based Flair Airlines and Lufthansa Technik Canada will see the airline’s engines maintained and repaired locally instead of at international shops. Flair has 18 Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft powered by LEAP engines and the servicing for those will now be done in Calgary. “We are currently servicing in three different facilities: One in Hamburg, Germany one in San Antonio, Texas, and one in China. So all that work is now coming into the Calgary area and 100 per cent of our LEAP engines will come through this (Calgary) shop,” said Len Corrado, the CEO of Flair Airlines. Last year, Lufthansa Technik and WestJet partnered with the Calgary Airport Authority to announce a $120 million engine maintenance facility in Calgary. The new 150,000-square-foot shop is still under construction, but an interim location in south Calgary has 90 staff that are already providing maintenance services on engines. Lufthansa Technik plans to ramp-up hiring to 160 employees in Calgary by the time the permanent facility opens in 2030. “We have the strong support in Alberta, knowing that there was a vision to establish an aerospace cluster where we found that the perfect environment for us to invest in a LEAP facility outside of Europe,” said Georg Fanta, the VP of Commercial Engine Services at Lufthansa Technik. Having the engines serviced in Canada will cut down the time a plane is typically out of service for maintenance when it’s done abroad, Corrado said. “Just to get the engine off-wing and then back on-wing probably takes 10 to 15 days, if it all goes well, let alone the cost of a heavy-haul airplane going internationally to China, to San Antonio to, to various places,” Corrado explained. Instead, Flair will now have “the ability to get an engine off the wing in a day and just down the road to (the Lufthansa) facility,” he added. Thursday’s partnership comes the day after the airport officially broke ground on its Alberta Training Centre for Excellence, a 126,000-square-foot facility with eight flight simulators and training areas for technicians and cabin crew. It’s part of an effort to establish Calgary as an airline hub. “The signal is clear: The signal is that we’re open for business,” said Chris Dinsdale, the president and CEO of the Calgary Airport Authority. “The (aerospace) world needs well-trained people. It needs land. It needs a government that supportive. It needs a city that’s supportive. It needs an airport that’s supportive,” Dinsdale said. “Calgary’s got what it needs.”
