Cardiff Aviation Completes First Client Maintenance Project – Boeing 757

The first customer aircraft due in for repair, maintenance and storage at Cardiff Aviation has arrived at – and departed from – the company’s St Athan Aerospace Enterprise Zone HQ in South Wales.

The first aircraft, a Boeing 757 owned by Icelandair and operated on behalf of Russian airline Yakutia, arrived at St Athan earlier this week.

“The 757 is a straightforward maintenance job requiring the removal and replacement of an engine, which is about as ideal a job as possible with which to start commercial aircraft maintenance operations at Cardiff Aviation – big, reasonably complex, and a clear illustration of our capabilities,” said Bruce Dickinson.

“The job was completed on time, on budget and without complication – but what was notable was that visiting supervisors commented on how impressive the facility is.

“The 757 joined two ‘ducks’ in our hangars – ‘water bombers’ which have been used to help fight forest fires in the Eastern Mediterranean. They’re Canadair CL-215s owned by Buffalo Airways in Canada, and we’ll be maintaining and storing them for the winter or until they’re needed to deal with the next fire fighting emergency. I flew one of them part of the way back from Turkey.”

Bruce met the Buffalo Airways team while on tour with Iron Maiden in North America this summer. He was invited to their Yellowknife base to fly Buffalo Airways’ primarily 1930s and 1940s aircraft. The adventure was filmed for an episode of the TV series Ice Pilots NWT.

“Wow, what an outfit they are. We’ll be releasing a video diary of the trip in due course, but we really hit it off – and realised we could do business together. The great thing is that I get to do some real flying in some amazing classic aircraft – a real challenge compared to the 757s I usually fly,” said Bruce.

“But back down to earth, and we’ve got a great deal going on at Cardiff Aviation. Firstly, there’s actually been quite a bit of not-very-sexy engineering type stuff going on in our HQ, but that’s the bread and butter.

“But we’ve had to wait for the approvals and paperwork to allow us to get on with the big and highly-visible work. We only got the keys to Twin Peaks in July, we’ve been flat out on paperwork, approvals, certificates and what-have-you, and we’ve actually got to where we are pretty well on target.

“In due course we’ll reveal the work schedule for the next 12 months, but suffice to say it’ll be on or close to business plan – which is reassuring and satisfying in such a volatile economic environment.”