Avianor will build a heavy maintenance facility at its Mirabel plant to initially service Air Canada’s Airbus A220 aircraft with the aim of attracting other customers. The agreement between Avianor and Air Canada is for 10 years with a renewable option.
Referred to by Avianor as its A220 Center of Excellence, the expansion, announced at the Paris Air Show, will cost more than $70 million, with Quebec contributing a $9 million forgivable loan.
Avianor, a subsidiary of DRAKKAR Aerospace and Ground Transportation, will build a hangar of approximately 105,000 square feet (9,755 square metres) next to its other facilities at Montreal-Mirabel Airport (CYMX). The expansion will add four maintenance bays capable of accommodating single-aisle aircraft like the A220, bringing the total number of its maintenance lines to seven.
Avianor currently maintains A220 airframes, which includes the wings, fuselage, landing gear, and empennage. Construction of the new A220 Center of Excellence should be completed in the fall of 2024, with more than 110 people joining Avianor’s current 225 employees. Priority will be given to the A220, but the company is eventually hoping to attract other single-aisle aircraft programs, such as the Boeing 737 family and the Airbus A320.
The construction of the Avianor center is the latest chapter in a saga that dates back over a decade in the maintenance of Air Canada aircraft.
By placing an order for 45 aircraft in February 2016 that would prove crucial to the survival of what was then the Bombardier C Series, Air Canada had managed to put behind it a long legal dispute with the province of Quebec. The province argued that the airline had violated federal law when it failed to maintain operational maintenance centers in Montreal, Winnipeg, and Mississauga during the collapse of Aveos over a decade ago — which eliminated over 2,000 jobs.
When the contract with Bombardier was announced, Air Canada had made a commitment to help create a center of excellence for the maintenance of the C Series aircraft, now called the Airbus A220.
For its part, Ottawa had amended the law that led to the privatization of Air Canada to remove obligations related to aircraft maintenance.
Notably, on June 21, Air Canada announced the prepayment of loans totaling around $650 million from Export Development Corporation, used to finance the acquisition of 19 A220-300 aircraft.
Currently, the airline has 33 A220-300s in its fleet, according to the Canadian Civil Aircraft Register.
