Maintaining the edge
As the dust begins to settle after a turbulent 18 months for the MRO sector, Gordon Smith sat down with David Doherty, head of sales at Etihad Engineering to discuss the challenges and opportunities ahead
Prior to joining Etihad Engineering as head of sales, David Doherty held senior positions at MRO firms in Europe
ETIHAD ENGINEERING
Airliner World:
Etihad Engineering appears to be one of the most robust MRO firms in the region – how have you navigated this turbulent period?
David Doherty: It was a big challenge. We were shaping up for the first quarter of 2020 to be the busiest we’d ever had – we were on target for budget, and potentially even beating it. Then the pandemic happened, and everything was turned upside down. Some airlines brought their maintenance forward and some delayed it completely. This was quite a hectic period where we were changing our schedule pretty much on a daily basis. We overcame the challenges and kept our hangars busy, but we weren’t necessarily doing the work we were originally planning to do. For example, we worked on Etihad aircraft which were grounded and took the opportunity to bring forward cabin maintenance so that by the time the aircraft returned to service they were in as a good a condition as possible.