AAR Corp. sees its recently acquired Triumph Group product support business as a promising avenue for both growth and accomplishing current component overhaul work more cost effectively, AAR President and CEO John Holmes said.
The deal, announced in late December 2023 and closed March 1, included five facilities—four in the U.S. and one in Thailand. Capabilities range from fuel valves to nacelle and flight control repair. AAR also snapped up Triumph’s catalog of about 10,000 proprietary repairs.
Investing in the Thai facility is among AAR’s priorities. The shop is set up to handle structural repairs on parts such as nacelles for current-generation aircraft popular in the region, such as the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350.
“We will be one of the four providers of structural repair capability in the region to support those large fleets,” Holmes said. “That’s organic growth as the new aircraft mature.”
AAR “sees opportunities” to add more component and accessory repair capability in Thailand as well, Holmes said.
“The competitive set there is somewhat limited as a lot of that work comes back to the west,” Holmes said. “So [we’ll] see a lot of opportunity now having a very solid footprint in Asia.” AAR also has a facility in Singapore and a component repair partnership with Air New Zealand.
Holmes expects the Triumph integration to take 12-18 months. A large chunk of the cost outlay will go toward preparing Triumph shops to take government work that AAR plans to relocate from a few legacy sites.
“That requires physical investment and reconfiguration of the Triumph site, which obviously translates to cost,” Holmes said.
Near-term, AAR is analyzing its workflow and determining opportunities to move or re-route existing work to a Triumph shop.
“We spend a lot of money with other repair vendors today to support our commercial power-by-the-hour programs,” Holmes said. “We send out a lot of work that we’re in charge of managing ... most of that repair goes to repair parties that are not Triumph.”
Holmes sees similar opportunities with some work done in AAR shops.
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