flydubai invests US$20m in maintenance and engineering

flydubai CEO, Ghaith Al Ghaith, said: “This is a tremendous achievement for the airline. It has been a huge project and everyone involved has worked incredibly hard to pull this together in such a short space of time. The recruitment, engineering and maintenance teams have done a great job and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for making this next stage in flydubai’s development a reality.

“I would also like to acknowledge Emirates Engineering, which had been providing our engineering and maintenance on a commercial basis. Bringing this function in house is a further example of our growing maturity as an airline.”

More than 75 engineers have been recruited from more than 15 nationalities to provide a dedicated round-the-clock service to flydubai’s rapidly growing fleet, which currently stands at 16 Boeing 737-800NG aircraft.

In addition to staff, the team has had to secure premises, tools, vehicles, parts and IT systems sufficient to provide world class maintenance and engineering support to Dubai’s world class low cost carrier.

flydubai’s Head of Maintenance and Engineering, Mick Hills, said: “I’m so pleased that we have reached this point. Many people said we wouldn’t be able to do it but once again flydubai has proved the doubters wrong. This has been a huge investment and we’ve worked hard to ensure we’ve got it right first time.

“In addition to the staff, parts, tools and premises, we’ve also invested in new technology to control our technical records and ensure we are scheduling maintenance and ground time in the most efficient way possible. This ensures we keep our aircraft flying, which is what makes the airline money. This is one of the quickest implementations for a fleet of aircraft ever done by AMOS and it’s hats off to all the team for managing the integration with our legacy systems so smoothly.

“I’m really excited by this new development for flydubai and am confident that the future of flydubai’s engineering and maintenance is in very safe hands.”

flydubai, Dubai’s first low-cost airline, is one of the world’s fastest growing airlines and has one of the youngest fleets in the world. Its network offers travellers affordable connections to a wide range of destinations across the GCC, Middle East, Africa, the Indian Sub-Continent and Russia and the former CIS, including; Beirut (Lebanon), Amman (Jordan), Lucknow (India), Baku (Azerbaijan) and Kathmandu (Nepal), amongst others.

flydubai is dedicated to making travel more accessible and affordable, taking every step to lower costs and pass on those savings to customers. All fares are one way and inclusive of taxes plus one piece of hand baggage weighing up to 7kg and a small handbag or laptop bag. Customers then pay for the optional extras they wish to receive, such as checked baggage, which starts at AED50 for 20kgs, or a seat with extra legroom for AED100.