The Engine MRO Landscape In 2026

If you would like to hear more insights and do business within the AeroEngine Maintenance, Manufacturing, Leasing and Finance Sectors, join us at the AeroEngines and ELTF Americas, 2022 event. 1000+ AeroEngine executives will meet in Tampa, Florida on February 9th through 11th for the largest dedicated AeroEngine gathering globally. Listeners save 20% on delegate fees with Promotion Code MRO podcast. Register now at AeroEnginesAmerica's.aviationweek.com. [MUSIC] Welcome to the Aero podcast. I'm James Pozzi, MRO Editor for the Amir region. And joining me today to talk about the newly released engineer book 2026 is Alex Durber, who is a long time contributor to aviation week, writing, probably about the aftermarket, but it's also plenty of articles linked to that on things like leasing and finance and whatnot. Of course, Alex oversaw the engineer book now. I don't know how many he's overseen to date, probably maybe into double figures now. I'm not too far off myself actually working on this, but Alex, thank you for joining me today. Thank you. I'm just looking at my pile of engineer books and it's a mini step ladder. I'm with you there, AeroGrowing actually. I've got mine just in my eye shot and seems to near and tend now at least I think, but maybe I should get it more framed, get it more framed maybe. Excellent. Now, great to have you on today and thank you for joining us. So yeah, just starting really, I guess, a kind of broad question, having edited the engineer book for 2026. What do you see, I guess, overall, of in terms of the industry, it's overall health of the sector, which I guess has seen many ups and downs, especially over the last five years? Yeah, I mean, I suppose the health of the engine sector depends on your perspective. If you're an airline, you're not getting the new aircraft you want and all the new engines you want and not enough, not in big enough numbers as you were hoping for, the new engines you do have are having to be taken off-wing more often than you want. And when they're taken off-wing, they're taking a year to get back and the price of parts is rising all the time. If you're from that perspective, you probably say it's in the Indian markets, in terrible health, but then if you're an aftermarket provider, a lesser or a maintenance provider or a parts provider, you probably think it's brilliant. The good demand is huge. There's no end to demand out there for your services. It's a place is which position you pick out of the two. I'd probably, from my perspective, I'd probably say it's in good health and some of the problems seem to be, they seem to have peaked. In terms of reliability problems and the inspections and most airlines when they're guiding now for how many aircraft they can have on the ground due to new jet and engine inspections or hospital visits seem to be guiding for lower numbers this year than they did last year, and then trading down in maybe two years time, not having any more on the ground, borrowing any new unforeseen problems. Yeah, absolutely. And a good point, actually, it all depends on your perspective. Going back amazingly, six years, nearly since the COVID pandemic, it just seems like a lifetime ago, but quite an interesting thought is, how does today's engine market differ from that kind of pre-2020 cycle? Immediately, I would say some of the workscopes have certainly changed and what customers are wanting in terms of the workscopes and what the shops are undertaking off the top of my head. But what comes to mind for you, Alex? So looking at it broadly, obviously, there's capacity problems now and there's still, it was still in that lots of world of post-pandemic recovery where people are struggling with labor still. But then in other ways, there's maybe a bit more similar out to the, then you would have expected six years ago, because a lot of six years ago, there was relatively few new gen engines in the market. It was, you know, CFM 56 dominating and I think, and while that would, people would still expect to be dominating the aftermarket this year, they might have expected fewer shop visits to be happening than they are and are going to happen because of the trend of aircraft being older aircraft being operated for longer. Well, obviously, there has been a trend for heavier workscopes and there's also been a trend for alternatives to overhalls. The demand for that is shopped up with things like module exchanges. While there have been heavier works go, some people are also building for shorter hours than they used to. So I'd say there's some key differences there. Absolutely. Yeah. I also think it's quite interesting how airlines in some regions, depending on weather-based, seem to go about maintaining their fleets, seems to be a belief that the way they do that is it's different not just in terms of getting life out of the, you know, the older engines. I heard something very interesting that the Air Canada was doing with some CFM 56 five days and their five Bs actually in terms of how they are doing it on a case-by-case basis and kind of seeing out the final years of one of those programs, but the other one there kind of taking new approaches to maintenance in terms of, you know, builds and shop visits. That was very interesting to me. And I guess airlines have mentioned them generally that mix of OEM types, of course, maybe pooling agreements for parts, but also leaning on those independent shops a lot more, maybe to, you know, add some, or to gain some of that extra capacity and get some those assets repaired, wherever they can. Certainly in Europe, that seems to be happening with some of the low-cost airlines. They've got a very sort of diverse mix of MRO partners that they're working with at the moment. So let's go on to the engineer book then. Which articles caught your eye, of course, you've edited probably maybe a dozen articles in the year, but this year, it's kind of bigger than ever in terms of volume and size. But what are some of the features that the listeners should be looking out for when they pick up their copy of that beautiful looking book? I write this one so I don't have to be blown away and trumpet, but I do think it's not really me. It's based on the work of the data team and I just try and analyze it a little bit. That's the first article every year now. We look at narrow-body engines, wide-body engines, and regional engines. Looking at the numbers, just the, first of all, the fleet numbers, how that's changed and how it's going to change over the next 10 years. So, for instance, when the inflection point's going to happen between New JN and old JN engines, and then doing the same for the maintenance market, seeing where the money's being spent now and where it's going to be spent over the next five, 10 years. Looking how different engines within each category than sort of narrow-body, wide-body, and regional, how their importance will change, sort of, to air within the global fleet and to the aftermarket. And then you also look, bringing into that things like retirement. So, you can make some estimations about the USM market and, you know, tear down market to see where materials like to come from and where suppliers likely to be tight. In that vein, another article that caught my eye, which is a sort of an amalgamation of a few articles that were written over the year about PMA and how that's making increasing inroads into the engine. You know, when we started reporting on PMA, everyone always said there was certainly going to be, you know, a few plastic bits in the cabin. But now that, you know, people are trying to eat as much life as they can out of current JN engines. It's really, you've had this sort of perfect meeting of circumstances where there's engines being operated for much longer than they would have done before. And companies now willing to build, and let's take in some development as well, to build these PMA parts for popular engines. And they're, yeah, we're going to see, we're going to see the use of PMA in CFM56 and the V20 500 increase a lot, I think, over the next few years. Absolutely. And I, Chromeloy, of course, playing a big role in that, based on the article in the yearbook. We always split them yearbook into three sections. What are maintenance, what are new technologies or current technologies, but usually new technologies, and they're a finite section, that engine asset management. And within that, we've got an interview with Darren Walmol, the chief operating officer of the LFC, who has a lot to say about the industry. I asked him if he thought that the new JN engines, whatever, obviously they're not going over the moment, with me, there were reliability of their predecessors, or come anywhere near the reliability of their predecessors. And he just basically gave a flap note to that. Although he said it, you know, they would still be cost effective. But yeah, he just, he, I was expecting him to, most people sort of hedge their bets on that and say, oh, you know, we'll see these, the pre-dissessive engines of this stage in their life also were not reliable, but he was just like, no. So that's quite interesting. Yeah, he's got a lot more to say on the engine leasing market as well. How about you? I agree there. And what Darren said seems to echo, especially at the engine event, so I attend, and even the engine leasing event, we do every year in London, he seems to, seems to echo a pretty popular opinion now. I think PMA was one of the best articles last year on the engine industry that we published at Aviation Week. Glad to have that in the yearbook, of course. I think PMA is just the, as you're right, the whole landscape has changed from when we were reporting on it 10 years ago. So I thought one of the most interesting things I heard when I was in Singapore last September 2025 was the changing Chinese attitude to PMAs and, well, USM as well. China is one of those countries that hadn't opened up to PMA, or hasn't really opened up to PMA at the same rates as everyone else, even USM parts. I mean, there wasn't even a pension for use parts in China. It was mostly for, you know, OEM factory parts. But the landscape has become more favorable in terms of procurement. There's a more open kind of system now led by the regulator, the CAAC, like everyone else. Chinese carriers will, you know, want to look for things that could be cost effective. So yeah, we're seeing more openness to it in China. I knew for a few years now that Asia Pacific as a region had become more open to it with its airlines over there, talking PMAs, but also extending to USM, of course, as well, although it was always more so than China as a country. We're just seeing it a lot more now in, you know, it's differs on a region by region basis. But yeah, that's not a part of the world I thought would open up as quickly as it has to these kind of alternative parts as well. So that'd be interesting how that grows in the next, you know, five years or so. Yeah, because, I mean, that's a huge reservoir of demand opening up at a time when retirement still aren't really happening. So what that's going to do to USM prices in the near term, obviously, retirements will happen at some point, but it might lead to a sudden uptick in prices aren't on USM. Yeah, I mean, we've seen in Europe, and especially in North America, the USM pricing, dependent on program, of course, some are some are rising higher than others in terms of price, of course, but that market has completely ascended in terms of costs in, well, I guess the last five years or so seems to some crazy prices that I've heard floating around for, you know, certain parts rate to certain programs and, you know, multiple times higher than in quite, on quote, normal times. And also another one as well, an article on kind of OEM networks building for those future networks. We've seen that constantly, especially in the last five years, new hangers, new engine shops being set up in all parts of the world. There are other issues in terms of serving capacity that you can build a hanger and you can set it set up, get it kitted out with all the equipment or the tooling, but there are other challenges there, of course, the supply chain, but also people. That's another big one too. And that seems to be one of the big constraints at the moment for the kind of future health of the engine market. It differs region by region in terms of causes of this. For example, Asia Pacific has a bit of a shortage of engine and capacity despite all the investment that's gone on there in the last few decades. Countless shops being set up there with engine OEM affiliations, airlines selling up their engine. And that's that's continuing, of course, with several, you know, really interesting projects going on there. Since the pandemic, Asia Pacific saw a big shortfall on a drain in talent and they are making moves to change that around, but that's going to take a lot of time in the engine side of the market, whereas compared to the airframe side of Asia Pacific's market, that's well served still. So there's not many capacity concerns there according to people in the region I've spoken to. Whereas in North America and to an extent, Europe as well, the average age of the average engineer or technician in the industry, you know, it's kind of around the mid 40s. I think the last time I look so attracting that, attracting that new talent into the industry to get people in early and develop them over the course of, you know, 40 years or so throughout the careers is tough. Whereas, you know, you go to the Middle East, for example, and they are really focusing on developing their own workforces to be, you know, the engine technicians of the future, instead of relying on expatriates, for example, which is something that's that they've done to an extent for quite a while now. So I guess the human side is a big challenge for the future too, but there's certainly obviously no shortage of demand at the moment in the market. As I said, the demand is certainly there, and there's a lot of growth for not just narrow body, of course, which takes up most of a lot of the focus when we talk about engines, but also the wide body. And there's a very strong market there with the G aerospace and Rolls-Royce engines in future. And that's come back very strong, I'd say. So just a little plug from my side, I think, of course, the engineer book has the directory section, listing all the companies involved in the engine ecosystem, got MROs, OEMs, airline maintenance companies, more recently lessores now are in there. We've opened up the business aviation. And for the first time, we've got a services and suppliers section, which I think was a bit over due in terms of its inclusion, because basically, sorry, lists anyone who doesn't do traditional repairs on an engine. So all part of that engine ecosystem, it could be a supplier of, I don't know, we've got a supplier of engine covers in there, for example. And it's all those people that are important in that in this industry, but aren't necessarily repairing the engines as such. But yeah, it's good to have those companies listed at last. And I think the last time I checked, we had, you know, well over 500 listings, maybe even more. So, you know, maybe all bright 1,000 for 20, 27, perhaps. We've grown all time. And yeah, and it's kind of reflected in the events as well. We do the air or engine events. Of course, we've got one coming up for the America's region in mid-February in Tampa, Florida. So that series of events is also growing in terms of attendance and volume and plenty of good sessions too and lots of good material to come for aviationweek.com. Now, excellent. Well, Alex, thank you very much for taking us through the new yearbook. That is now available. You can inquire about that on aviationweek.com. If you're attending one of our upcoming shows, such as the Arrow Engine show, you'll find a copy available to pick up, but get them quickly because they do vanish after a day or two. They, you know, they go a lot hall cakes. Well, thanks for having me, James. Yeah, cheers, Alex. Thanks for taking us through that. Thank you for listening today to the MRO podcast. Join us every Monday for the latest episode. They drop Monday morning. We call it MRO Mondays. And you can hear those new episodes drop either on Apple or Spotify. And while you're there, feel free to leave us a review. And thank you for listening. If you would like to hear more insights and do business within the Arrow Engine Maintenance, Manufacturing, Leasing and Finance Sectors, join us at the Arrow Engines and ELTF Americas, 2026 event. 1000 plus Arrow Engine executives will meet in Tampa, Florida on February 9th through 11th for the largest dedicated Arrow Engine gathering globally. Register now at arrow engines americas.aviationweek.com.