An aircraft maintenance programme is critical to maintaining aircraft airworthiness. However, during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, aircraft maintenance repair organization (MRO) businesses were adversely impacted, including but not limited to retrenchments, restructurings, and permanent business closure. Therefore, the aim of this chapter is to propose a business optimization strategy for Malaysian MRO affected by the COVID-19 pandemic to promote business growth. The data and methodology used to produce this proposal were derived from an analysis of numerous literature reviews that were identified as having a high impact Malaysian aviation. This chapter finds that the COVID-19 pandemic has a global impact on aviation businesses; travel restrictions imposed by the majority of countries have caused major disruptions in the aviation and aircraft maintenance businesses, as the majority of airlines have grounded their aircraft; however, there are still some aviation business opportunities as a direct consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic.
TopIntroduction
The National Aerospace Blueprint, which detailed the growth strategy to convert Malaysia's Aerospace sector into a vibrant regional and international aerospace player by 2015, aided in the establishment of Malaysian aerospace (Ministry of International Trade and Industry, 2017). The launch of the Malaysia Aerospace Industry Blueprint 2030 is an important platform for the development of the Malaysia Aerospace industry following the success of the 1997 National Aerospace Blueprint. One of the key sub-sectors highlighted in the National Aerospace Blueprint and Malaysia Aerospace Blueprint 2030 is the MRO which focuses on aircraft, ground systems, simulators and ground set equipment (Ministry of International Trade and Industry, 2017). It is also noted that Malaysia is on track to become SEA number 1 aerospace nation and an important part of the global market by 2030 by combining other sub-sector categories into the 2030 blueprint and generating over 32,000 high-paid jobs with annual revenue of RM55.2 billion by 2030 (Ministry of International Trade and Industry, 2021) as shown in Figure 1. The MRO sector is expected to achieve at least 5% of its worldwide market share by 2030 (Ministry of International Trade and Industry, 2021), where growth in this sector was regarded as essential to sustaining the industry overall.
Figure 1. Malaysia Aerospace Industry Blueprint 2030 (Ministry of International Trade and Industry, 2021)
The number of aircraft in service is projected to increase as the number of air travelers increases. As a result, the demand for aircraft maintenance activities to maintain aircraft airworthiness is projected to grow in line with the increase of air travelers. This is due to the fact that an efficient aircraft maintenance program has a direct impact on the lifecycle and availability of aviation components and fleet (Grokhovskaya, 2018). Therefore, the requirement for airworthiness has a meaningful effect on reviving aircraft MRO businesses.
However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Malaysia imposed a movement control order on March 18, 2020, under the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988 and the Police Act 1967 (Bunyan, 2020). During the movement control order, it was stated that all Malaysians will be prohibited from travelling overseas and no tourists or foreigners will be permitted to enter the country (Bunyan, 2020), resulting in a significant disruption in air travel projection and aircraft operations. Furthermore, travel restrictions and grounding of aircraft have delayed the maintenance action, hence the airlines are viewing the opportunity to upgrade their fleet from older model to newer model aircraft (SATAIR, 2021). As aircraft requires a certain operation time limit or ageing before visiting MROs for heavy maintenance checks, MROs businesses will be slowed down (SATAIR, 2021). Therefore, this paper is essential to propose a business optimization strategy for Malaysian MRO affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in order to promote business efficiency and growth with the objectives of identifying the current aircraft MRO maintenance management towards the future projection of the aviation sector, evaluating the impact of COVID-19 pandemic to the aircraft MRO maintenance management and developing business optimization strategy for improving MRO maintenance management impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, this paper enables MRO companies to develop the appropriate business optimization strategy needed to generate high business optimization impact, as well as serving as post COVID-19 pandemic feedback to government agencies in order to realign the Malaysia Aerospace Blueprint 2030 deliverables.
TopLiterature Review
This paper will be started of literature review that will cover the discussion on current Malaysian aircraft Maintenance Repair Organization (MRO) maintenance management towards aviation sector future projection followed by COVID-19 pandemic impacts on Malaysia aircraft maintenance business and strategy to promote business optimization for MRO.