As Aero Upgrades Maintenance Facility

As Aero Upgrades Maintenance Facility

Chinedu Eze

To fully utilise its personnel and provide efficient service to its local and international clients, Aero Contractors has modernised and upgraded its Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility.

Specifically, the airline introduced software that provides digital solutions in its operations.

The company’s Chief Executive Officer, Captain Ado Sanusi, said Aero has invested about N200 million in the software provided by Ramco, which would serve the MRO for a period of five years.

In a joint press briefing with Ramco in Lagos, Sanusi stated that Aero entered into the partnership with Ramco, a software company based in Chennai, India to provide improved digital solutions to its MRO operations.

He stated that with the partnership, every aspect of the airline’s MRO services can now be accessed and tracked real time for enhanced efficiency.

The Aero boss stated that in the last three years, Aero MRO has performed many C- checks, starting with its own aircraft and then on third party aircraft from other airlines both in Nigeria and in West and Central Africa. It also performed landing gear replacements on many aircraft owned by domestic carriers, which include Azman Air, Max Air and others. It also conducted similar services on aircraft owned by foreign airlines, including Swift Air in Spain, Passion Air in Ghana and Gomair in DR Congo.

“When we took over the company, it was underperforming, we revived the maintenance aspect of the company and started conducting C-checks on Boeing 737 Classics. Before them Aero had the capability and we have been conducting checks on small body aircraft, helicopters and now, we have successfully conducted D-check on Boeing 737 aircraft. “We have trained our engineers on New Generation Boeing aircraft and Embraer. When we receive certification, we will expand our maintenance to include NGs and Embraer aircraft. We want to increase the capacity of our engine workshop. We want to create efficiency in our processes, hence the adaptation of the software,” he said.

On the benefits of the software, the Head of Aero MRO, James Ominyi, said the system would track effectively the optimum utilisation of manpower.

“If you are doing things manually, you can hire 100 people and you won’t know who is doing what. But with this solution, we will be able to capture the manpower hours effectively. You will know who is playing truancy and you will know those fooling around, you will be able to capture a lot and that is why we have subscribed to the software.

“We don’t have to pay people for what they didn’t do. If you engage someone for eight hours the he has to do the work for eight hours or else, we will be shooting ourselves on the legs.

“When we made this known to the management, they bought into the idea. We are fully live on the system. Ramco has very wide spectrum of activities. We haven’t even subscribed to all. As time goes on, other areas of our operation will be covered but we have to start from somewhere and the place we are starting from is the MRO, which is where the major activities take place.

“Eventually, we will go into rotary wing operations, finance, HR, flight operations and other places. We have begun to see the benefits of RAMCO,” he added.

Ominyi, noted that it would be impossible for us to do everything manually in MRO services.

“Our workshops from battery shops, to wheels and brakes, to the main checks etc; they are so huge. They are so huge that if you have to do everything manually, you are going to leave out certain things. To avoid a situation where some things are left out, we decided to subscribe to Ramco Aviation Solutions,” he added.

In her speech, the Ramco General Manager Africa, Europe and Middle East, Mrs. Menaka Sinha, said Ramco, Aviation Software company is a fully web-centric application developed from the ground-up, specifically for the aviation industry is trusted by over 22,000 users to manage more than 4,000 aircraft globally.

“Accessible on cloud and mobile, the innovation-rich aviation solution is a comprehensive software with modules for engineering and programs, maintenance, finance, compliance and quality, flight operations and integration gateway (iRIS), that comes with advanced visualization dashboard on a mobile-ready platform.

“Ramco is changing the paradigm of enterprise software with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning based solutions, powered by new features such as voice-based transactions on Google Assistant or Alexa, chatbots, mail bots, HUBs and cognitive solutions.

“We are excited to add Nigeria’s leading and oldest MRO, Aero Contractors Company of Nigeria Limited to our clientele. The successful implementation of Ramco Aviation Suite at Aero will automate manual work execution processes and enable organisation-wide visibility,” she said.

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