MTU Maintenance Celebrates 40th Anniversary

 MTU Maintenance celebrates its 40th anniversary and 20,000th shop visit in Hannover, Germany. The celebration of the official founding of the wholly-owned MTU subsidiary, MTU Maintenance Hannover GmbH, on Nov. 29, 1979, was attended by local politicians including Stephan Weil, minister president of Lower Saxony, MTU executives, employees present from the start and current apprentices.

“This is a landmark occasion for MTU Maintenance,” says Reiner Winkler, chief executive officer, MTU Aero Engines AG. “Forty years ago, we identified a growing trend in commercial aviation and strategically entered the maintenance business.” The first engine to go through the facility was a CF6-50 engine from Hapag-Lloyd in 1981. This program ran within the group right up until June 2019, when the last CF6-50 left MTU Maintenance’s Canadian facility in Vancouver.

“We’ve gone from just a single engine type in the early 1980s to having the largest portfolio worldwide with around 30 commercial aero engines,” Michael Schreyögg, chief program officer, MTU Aero Engines says. MTU Maintenance’s portfolio ranges from helicopter engines and the popular  V2500 to the large GE90-115B widebody engine. Network capacity stands at over 1,100 shop visits per year today. “In fact, we just completed our 20,000th shop visit across the group. A V2500 from our partner IAE that left the Hannover facility at the end of November,” he adds.

Holger Sindemann, managing director at the Hannover facility and SVP MRO Operations for the entire MTU Maintenance network also reflects back to the beginning. “We started with around 200 employees. Now, more than 2,400 employees work here in Langenhagen, and we have a total of well over 5,000 MTU Maintenance employees worldwide – and growing. They are the backbone of our success and I want to take this occasion to express my thanks to them.”