Bucking The Cycle With Job Air Technic

Celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, Czech MRO provider Job Air Technic drew crowds throughout MRO Europe 2023 to a spacious stand where management was keen to discuss the company’s expansion plans over a glass of pilsner.

“For us it’s a must to be here at MRO Europe,” says Job Air Technic CEO Vladimír Stulančák.

“We still get more and more value from this show. You can save on a lot of travel because when you are here you can meet everybody which is a real time saving.”

Unlike much of the aviation industry, Job Air experienced what Stulančák describes as “golden years” during the pandemic, doubling its maintenance man hours from 2020 to 2022 on the back of brisk business from lessors requiring end-of-lease checks and storage solutions.

At the height of the pandemic, the company had 50 aircraft in storage on top of full hangars at its facility near Ostrava, Czechia. A big reason for this is that it welcomes the type of ad hoc, end-of-lease maintenance that more production-line focused MRO providers prefer to avoid.

And while, the Russia-Ukraine war lost the company its Russian customers, these were replaced almost immediately by airlines desperate to find maintenance slots.

"Our biggest advantage is our flexibility because we are not a company that signs our full capacity for three to five years nose to tail, which means you cannot do anything else. We sign contracts also on a short-term basis to give opportunities to everybody.”

Although Job Air has core capabilities in Boeing 737, Airbus A320 and A330 maintenance it is keen to branch out into other activities, to which end it may announce a “synergistic” acquisition in the next six months.

The company has also launched its ‘Go Team’ for off-site MRO support and is developing an AI platform called JATIS for predictive production planning.