Flybe Aviation Services wins top European award

Flybe Aviation Services, the aircraft maintenance division of Exeter-based Flybe, Europe’s largest regional airline, has been named European Airline MRO of the Year by Aviation Week’s Overhaul & Maintenance (O&M) magazine, a renowned US-based global industry publication based in New York in recognition of its ‘outstanding contribution to the aviation maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) industry’.

The company has been chosen as the 2009 Award winner for ‘having built the largest turboprop MRO business in Europe in the past four years – and becoming a Bombardier-approved service centre for Dash 8s, Q400s and CRJ jets, whilst also handling Embraer, BAe 146 and Avro RJ regional jets. Flybe has a reputation for being an extremely well-run company that is thriving during difficult times, which is a testament in itself’.

Explained in more general terms, the award recognises airline-owned or affiliated MRO (Maintenance Repair & Overhaul) companies operating in Europe for excellence in aviation and aerospace aftermarket operations, reflecting the engineering support given to both suppliers and end users once an aircraft is in operation.

Marshall Barrand, Flybe’s Director of Aviation Services, says: “This is a great honour for Flybe Aviation Services. We’re naturally delighted to have been recognised with such a prestigious international award and it is a well deserved testament to all our staff who play such a key engineering role.”

Flybe’s Aviation Services’ state of the art facility, housed in the impressive New Walker Hangar in Exeter, is the largest regional maintenance facility in Europe from which the company supports a diverse and impressive global group of customers. Its workshops offer fully capable, flexible solutions that incorporate the widest range of services available, a service unrivalled by any other similar facility in the sector and one that provides an efficient service with guaranteed downtimes so critically important to the economic and sustainable operation of any airline.

In congratulating Flybe Aviation Services on the Award, Tom Henricks, President of Aviation Week commented: “Flybe Aviation Services has led the MRO industry through difficult times and has proved itself amongst the best in the global MRO industry.”

As a company, Flybe is no stranger to receiving global recognition and this latest Award joins an increasingly long list of internationally renowned accolades already received by the airline, the most recent being the 2009 Regional Airline of the Year award from the widely acclaimed US-based global industry publication, Air Transport World (ATW).

Adds Mr Barrand, who will travel to Hamburg in September to receive the prestigious accolade during a special ceremony to be held during Aviation Week’s MRO Europe 2009 Conference and Exhibition: “We are extremely upbeat about the future of Flybe Aviation Services and there is a lot of potential to expand ever further our maintenance and workshop capabilities. We are well placed to allow this growth potential to be recognised and, with our undoubted skills as a recognised centre for training excellence, to continuing to provide and attract sustainable work and jobs to the South West.”