Azul Becomes New Player In South American MRO

Brazilian carrier Azul Airlines has launched a dedicated maintenance arm, Azul TecOps, to offer services to third-party customers. 

Its move follows the closure last year of TAP Maintenance & Engineering's Brazilian operations after the Portuguese company struggled to find a buyer to perform a divestiture demanded by the European Union in return for approval of €2.55 billion ($2.75 billion) of state aid for TAP during the pandemic.

TAP’s Brazilian maintenance business had been struggling in any case, partly because one of its biggest customers in the mid-2010s, Azul, built its own hangar at Viracopos.

Azul TecOps is based at Viracopos Airport just outside Sao Paulo, which it claims is the largest hangar in Latin America with a 377,000 sq.ft² footprint and capacity for three simultaneous heavy maintenance lines.

Another Brazilan carrier, Gol, launched third-party maintenance services in 2019 via its Gol Aerotech arm. Its Confins facility has two maintenance hangars and one paint hangar, plus six workshops capable of repairing and overhauling wheels, brakes and steel structures, as well as the inspection of engines and other components. 

Azul’s new business unit, meanwhile, will provide heavy maintenance, line maintenance, component repair and overhaul, training and technical consulting services for aircraft types such as Airbus A320, A321, A330, A350, Embraer E1/E2, ATR 600 and Boeing 737-400F aircraft.

It will also perform component repairs for wheels, brakes, batteries, structures, interiors, avionics, oxygen systems and safety/emergency equipment, as well as testing services such as non-destructive testing.

Other services such as engine boroscope inspections, aircraft weighing, CVR and DFDR data analysis and placard manufacturing are also provided.

Azul TecOps' secondary facility in Belo Horizonte, at Pampulha airport, also offers smaller hangars for regional aircraft maintenance services. The 151,000 sq.ft² facility has four maintenance lines for ATR, Embraer 195, Boeing and Pilatus aircraft.