G

MFAeroAsia, a subsidiary of national flag carrier Garuda Indonesia, announced the company was planning to expand its aircraft repair and maintenance businesses by serving Australian carriers this year.

The business expansion was made possible after the company became certified by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) '€” Australia'€™s aviation authority '€” according to GMF president director Richard Budihadianto.

'€œWe are now an Approved Maintenance Organization [AMO] registered in Australia. We see potential in this market and we will now be able to better penetrate it,'€ Richard told The Jakarta Post.

He added that the company had been certified by CASA to maintain and repair Boeing aircraft including B737-600, B737-700, B737-800, B737-900 and Airbus A318, A319 and A320 operated by Australian carriers, both regular and charter flights.

The maintenance activities will be carried out at the company'€™s facilities in Cengkareng, Banten as well as in Denpasar, Bali

GMFAeroAsia is preferred by Australian carriers as its maintenance facilities are closer to Australia in comparison to similar maintenance services offered by European and North American countries.

The Indonesian company is also offering affordable prices for the maintenance and repair of aircraft for its customers, allowing operators to be more efficient.

Richard also said that Australian carriers had flown to major points in Indonesia such as Jakarta, Denpasar, Bali; Surabaya, East Java; and Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara, making Indonesia a popular destination for the operators.

He was optimistic that the company could firmly grip on to this new market in the future.

In addition, GMF spokesman Mochamad Aviv said the company'€™s facilities recently completed heavy maintenance work (C-check) on a MD-11 plane operated by AV Cargo, an operator under Civil Aviation Authority Zimbabwe (CAAZ).

'€œThe plane has returned to its country of origin today. We are going to work on more [AV Cargo] plane projects in the future as we signed aircraft maintenance contracts with them,'€ Aviv said.

The company generates between US$300,000 to $400,000 for a C-check.

Besides CASA, he said that GMF had been certified by world'€™s most important institutions '€” the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), allowing the firm to cater to the global market.

Middle East, South Asia and African regions are its large markets.

To enable the firm to repair and overhaul more aircraft, it is set to operate its fourth hangar in Cengkareng at the end of 2015.

The fourth hangar is currently being constructed on an 18,000 square-meter plot of land and will be equipped with a multipurpose docking platform for C-checks for narrow-body planes when it is finished.

The company spent around $52 million for the new hangar.

Moreover, he said that the company aimed to increase its revenue by 26 percent to $266 million this year.