Originally Posted by
vectismanpaul
For maintenance since the ridiculous decision made by a former engineering director to close the Gatwick hangar! With BA Mainline and BA Euroflyer having a growing based fleet it now seems a short sighted decision. Previously maintenance could be carried out on site without impacting the schedules too much.
if Euroflyer does get to 30 or so aircraft and BA long haul does expand they will surely have to think again. There are engineers based at Gatwick but I believe they have no hangar space as such.
I think the old Laker hangar (Hangar 6), is all that's left of the once enormous hangarage at LGW, all the BCAL engineering buildings are long gone, and I believe Hangar 6 has asbestos issues?
BA see Maintenance as a cost to be controlled where as Lufthansa managed to make Lufthansa Technik into a world leading 3rd party maintenance provider. I cannot imagine BA building a new maintenance hangar ever again, they'd go third party before they'd spend that sort of money. At LHR, Technical Block A dates from the 1950s, TBB and TBD were demolished which leaves TBA, TBJ/TBK (the B747 hangars from the 1970s) and the Cathedral Hangar. Nothing at LHR us under 50 years old, and TBA has acres of empty office space due to....asbestos. GLA hangar dates from around 1966 when Abbotsinch became the new Glasgow Airport, which leave Cardiff which was opened with a wad of public sector funding in 1993. The early 90s build ex BMI hangar at LHR is now used by United who actually do invest in such infrastructure.
Management will put it off and keep kicking the can until the infrastructure falls down and they can offshore most of it.
Bottom line, can anyone see BA under IAG building anything new in the UK ever?