The UK’s second biggest full service airline and Star Alliance partner, bmi, and its low-cost subsidiary, bmibaby, have contracted Lufthansa Technik AG, the world’s leading provider of technical services for commercial aircraft, for the aircraft overhaul of their fleets.  Under the agreement, Lufthansa Technik will take over all base maintenance for the Boeing and Airbus fleets of the two airlines over the next five years. The deal is worth in excess of 50 million euro.

Lufthansa Technik will be responsible for all base maintenance checks for bmi’s 24 A320-family aircraft and three Airbus A330 aircraft, the newly added ex-BMED fleet of 8 A320-family aircraft and for bmibaby’s growing fleet of Boeing 737 Classics currently at 21 aircraft.  Over the next 5 years more than 150 heavy maintenance events, will be performed at several sites within the Lufthansa Technik Group. According to current plans, most of the work will be carried out by Lufthansa Technik Budapest and Lufthansa Technik Malta.

"We are delighted and proud to be providing technical support in the UK to an airline of the stature of bmi. Our collaboration with bmi up to now has been confined to individual services. The trust that has been placed in us in the award of this complete overhaul package bears witness to the quality and flexibility of the base maintenance services that we offer through the centers of excellence in our network,” said Dr. Andreas Heizner, Senior Vice President Overhaul of Lufthansa Technik. “For us this is a significant first step into an important market.”

”This contract signifies bmi’s  confidence in LHT to perform all our fleet heavy maintenance check for the next five years.  The deal also marks the beginning of what we all hope will be a long term partnership with LHT, that will deliver the quality maintenance we have come to expect, at a competitive price,”said Ian Davies, Director Engineering, bmi 

Swaran Sidhu, Technical Director of bmibaby added:
“This is an important milestone for bmibaby.  Securing maintenance capacity for the next 5 years with a progressive and high quality MRO organisation such as LHT not only gives peace of mind in an increasingly congested MRO marketplace, but also simplifies and smooths the planning process, allowing us to concentrate on our core business”.

bmi is the UK’s second biggest airline. With a current fleet of 35 aircraft, it offers over 1,700 flights per week to destinations in Europe, Middle East and the USA. The Star Alliance partner, in which Lufthansa holds a 30 percent stake, employs a workforce of 4,000 and is based at London’s Heathrow airport. With a fleet of 21 aircraft and growing, bmibaby flies to 25 destinations in eight countries from several bases around the UK.

As the world’s leading maintenance, repair and overhaul provider for commercial and VIP aircraft, Lufthansa Technik serves more than 580 customers around the world. The Lufthansa Technik Group employs some 25,000 staff world-wide (1,600 of them in the USA) in a network of 27 subsidiaries and over 60 maintenance stations.