Zenith Aviation

To say that the pandemic brought the aviation industry to a standstill is an understatement. In the months since the pandemic went global, passenger air travel was grounded by international travel restrictions to contain any chance of a rapid spread. Consequentially, operators, both large and small, experienced a steep drop in revenue, forcing them to look for ways to reduce maintenance costs without compromising quality. As an independent MRO in the aviation space, Zenith Aviation is perfectly poised to address this exact need. The company provides effective MRO services with significantly lower overheads—something that a typical OEM facility can never offer without under-selling their product at a loss. With its long-standing heritage in supporting Bombardier and Textron aircraft, Zenith Aviation continues to show its excellence in aircraft maintenance. “By expanding into other platforms and OEM’s products rapidly, we have become one of the market leaders in the aircraft maintenance field.I have to commend thededication, tenacity and commitment of the entire maintenance team which has once again delivered exponential year on year growth, to a point that the planning team are having to turn down many requests due to capacity constraints, which is an area we are working to address’’says Stuart Mulholland, Managing Director of the company.

Zenith Aviation understands the challenges of an operator better than anyone else in the industry. Their experience as an operator allows them to combat theseobstacles for their clients. By establishing open relationships with customers, the company identifies their unique requirements and delivers efficient maintenance services. Furthermore, Zenith Aviation’s quoting procedures are transparent and supply the parts at a highly competitive price. While enrolling an aircraft in a program, For aircraft enrolled on Maintenance Programmes, the company does not charge any additional handling fees or surcharges. Moreover, their third-party markups are around 60 to 70 percent lower than those of larger facilities.

“In order to maintain the highest quality in standard when providing MRO servicesto a variety of different Type Designs, Zenith Aviation employs a team of highly experienced and OEM trained technical staff to ensure product quality and on-time delivery within their control,” mentions Aaron Hughes, Director of Maintenance at Zenith. The Zenith Aviation team never shies away from new evolutions or modifications, including complex structural repairs, large modification and heavy maintenance scopes. By undertaking such complex and challenging works, the company maintains a competitive edge and a leading position by pioneering many before unseen depths of maintenance. As such, Zenith Aviation has performed many firsts at its locations in London. This accomplishment in maintenance has raised great interest among operators and owners who usually turn to OEMs to perform such work, in the absence of experience.

The company develops its ownSTC’s (Supplementary Type Certificates) and Service Bulletins,alongside their partner Part 21J, that allow them to perform modifications based on customer requirements. Such modifications are performed at significantly lower material cost as they are not duty-bound to procure via the STC holder for kits and LRU’s (Line Replaceable Units). They source the components and parts through their own supply chain and offer them at a lower cost with minimal lead times.

On numerous occasions, customers chose Zenith Aviation for their maintenance inputs when the scope of work included accomplishment of service bulletins that the OEM facilities would normally provide free of charge. Although OEMs provide some of these scopes with free labor, Zenith Aviation provides alleviations related to SB labor on a case by case basis to ensure service quality over cost. In one instance, an operator approached Zenith Aviation to rectify interior cabin defects, which the OEM or Completion STC holder no longer supported. The client was required to replace the foam insulators around the sidewall cabin windows. However, the OEM was unable to provide the parts, and the vendor quoted an unreasonable amount. In this regard, Zenith Aviation stepped in and found the material specification and dimensions of the original equipment for its Part 21J provider to produce a modification to comply with, all at a great price.

Zenith Aviation also manages a continuing airworthiness department that supports fleet-operated aircraft and offers one-stop-shop capabilities to their clients. “Having our own Part M department further makes every input supported by this capability symbiotic and stress free for the owner to improve the customer experience further,” mentions Mulholland. Part M team can also access aircraft during maintenance inputs quickly to review the defects.

The company puts maximum effort into building solid relationships with its valuable client base. For that reason, word of mouth and reputation drives business for them. Moving ahead, Zenith Aviation is preparing to increase its capacity to accommodate a greater number of new clients.