AMSTERDAM—AFI KLM E&M is making strides toward preparing the aftermarket for advanced air mobility through a series of new partnerships and initiatives.
The maintenance provider signed a memorandum of understanding Oct. 18 at Aviation Week’s MRO Europe event with hydrogen-electric aircraft developer ZeroAvia to partner on technician training and component support. Under the agreement, the companies will jointly study technical training requirements and processes for the technicians who will retrofit and maintain future fleets equipped with hydrogen-electric propulsion technology.
“Alongside other technological solutions such as sustainable aviation fuels and 100% electric propulsion, we are very interested in ZeroAvia’s promising hydrogen-electric architectures and retrofit plans,” says Ton Dortmans, executive vice president for KLM Engineering & Maintenance. “We firmly believe in the development of ‘zero-carbon’ aviation, and we have decided to make a concrete contribution by mobilizing our expertise and our MRO ecosystem. Developing new machines is one thing. It’s quite another to operate and maintain them—and we need to start preparing for that today, together with our partners and customers.”
In addition to hydrogen-electric preparations, AFI KLM E&M also announced plans to begin offering dedicated maintenance training for advanced air mobility (AAM) in the first half of 2025. It is working to prepare its Part 147 training operations to support a variety of AAM fleet types, including electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL), hybrid-electric and hydrogen-powered aircraft.
According to Pierre Teboul, senior vice president of commercial at AFI KLM E&M, the MRO provider wants to prepare and upgrade the skills of its experts “so that we are ready on D-Day, when we have to meet the needs of the market with practical, adapted and high-performance operational solutions. This means preparing for it today, upgrading the skills of our instructors and designing new training materials.”
Rob Koedijk, product development manager at AFI KLM E&M, notes that training requirements for AAM will mirror existing maintenance training, in which technicians can acquire multiple certifications as needed on various aircraft and propulsion platforms. He foresees that existing technicians could acquire extra qualifications for these new platforms.
AFI KLM E&M says it plans to be ready to provide training to customers as soon as leading civil aviation authorities have adopted and published regulatory framework for AAM aircraft. The company operates three main training centers in Paris, Amsterdam and Norwich, UK.
The MRO provider has also been working with several other AAM developers to explore maintenance training, as well as other mutual interest areas such as aircraft development, maintenance support and data analytics. At 2022’s MRO Europe event it signed memoranda of understanding to explore cooperation areas with eVTOL developer Ascendance Flight Technologies and electric aircraft developer Ampaire.
Koedijk says AFI KLM E&M sees similar aftermarket challenges for Ascendance, Ampaire and ZeroAvia. “It is likely that multiple technologies (battery electric, hybrid and hydrogen) could co-exist and thus we need to have a broad view,” he says. “The simplest lesson is thus that we need to prepare and understand multiple technologies.”
AFI KLM E&M’s parent airlines are also supporting research and development efforts for next-generation fuels as part of their sustainability commitments. On Oct. 18 at MRO Europe, Air France-KLM, Air France and KLM jointly awarded funding to the TU-Delft France Initiative. The sustainability-focused initiative will in its first phase, between 2023-26, focus on aircraft engineering associated with green fuels such as hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel, as well as materials, propulsion and runway optimization. The companies will be donating €150,000 ($158,000) a year to the initiative for a three-year period.
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