MHIRJ Lands Piedmont Airlines Heavy Maintenance Deal

ATLANTA—MHI RJ Aviation Group (MHIRJ) is well known for its position as the largest provider of Bombardier CRJ maintenance in North America, but now the company is looking to expand its horizons. As part of efforts to diversify its service offerings to other aircraft platforms, MHIRJ  has signed a new contract with American Airlines subsidiary Piedmont Airlines to conduct heavy maintenance services on its Embraer ERJ145 fleet.

Under the three-year deal, announced April 18 at MRO Americas, MHIRJ will perform maintenance on Piedmont’s ERJ145 aircraft from its maintenance facility in Bridgeport, West Virginia. The facility was expanded last year in preparation for MHIRJ’s diversification strategy, with the company adding 100,000 ft.² of purpose-built hangar space capable of accommodating up to narrowbody-sized aircraft. MHIRJ will initially operate a single dedicated nose-to-tail heavy maintenance line at the facility with the potential to add more lines in the future.

“The Embraer [ERJ] is really the first step forward to getting people to think about MHIRJ as more than a CRJ MRO, and as an MRO for all sorts of aircraft types going forward,” says Ross Mitchell, MHIRJ’s vice president of strategy, business development, marketing, communications and business operations.

Last week, MHIRJ’s senior vice president and head of aftermarket, Ismail Mokabel, told Aviation Week its diversification strategy is targeting customers that fly dual fleets. In the regional carrier space, there are certainly plenty of operators flying ERJ145 aircraft. According to Aviation Week Network’s 2023 Commercial Fleet and MRO Forecast, there are currently 377 ERJ145s in service operated by more than 80 carriers. Commutair operates the largest fleet of 63 aircraft, followed by Piedmont. North American carriers operate the majority of the aircraft type (210), followed by Africa, which operates 78, and Latin America, which operates 33. The forecast projects $575.1 million in MRO demand for the aircraft type in 2023.

Although the Piedmont contract is not MHIRJ’s first non-CRJ work, Mitchell says the deal is its largest so far. It first started offering ERJ145 services for American Airlines interline partner Contour Airlines. MHIRJ also supports several of Piedmont’s sister airlines with CRJ maintenance, including PSA Airlines, Air Wisconsin Airlines and SkyWest Airlines.

In addition to MHIRJ’s expanded West Virginia facility, Mitchell says the company could also potentially offer more capacity for other platforms at its service center in Tucson, Arizona, which was originally built to accommodate aircraft larger than narrowbodies. “We’ll see how the plan moves forward,” he says. “It’s not necessarily the case that all the maintenance we do going forward will be just exclusively for West Virginia. In fact, what we really have now is two facilities that are capable of taking larger aircraft, which allows us more flexibility as to where we send the work.”

MHIRJ is not the only OEM-specialized MRO to begin diversifying its maintenance offerings to other aircraft platforms. Earlier this year, Embraer’s Vice President for Global MRO Centers, Frank Stevens, told Aviation Week the company looking at offering “agnostic capabilities.” Asked about this trend, Mitchell says market competition is definitely driving MROs to grow their portfolios.

“I think it’s always wise when you’re in the services business to be able to provide those services to more than one type of aircraft. It just makes your business much more resilient going forward. It gives you more opportunity to get revenue and margins, so I think it’s smart to be across platforms and not solely on a single platform,” says Mitchell. “I think the unique proposition we have is that though we come from an OEM, we are no longer building airplanes, so when we say we’re agnostic to type, we really are. I think it’s a little bit more difficult for someone who’s still in the manufacturing business to say that.”

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