AMEL BELKHAMSA: ADAPTING TO DEMAND IN MRO
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In an industry that is constantly evolving, it’s always interesting to see how we are able to pivot and adapt. We recently spoke with Amel Belkhamsa, Vice President of Technical Services at MHIRJ, about how we’re seeing seeing a resurgence in demand for the CRJ platform, and operators flying aircraft longer. Amel shares how her team is responding—from material support to engineering solutions—and why collaboration is more critical than ever.
MHIRJ: Amel, I want to talk a little bit about how we're seeing industry flying aircraft longer. How does that impact technical services and support with your team?
Amel: The CRJ platform really holds a sweet spot in commercial aviation, considering scope clause. So, what we've been seeing over the last year—and for the expectation we are going to see for another few years—is a real rise in terms of utilization and demand for the aircraft.
Flying the CRJ specifically has grown 20% year on year in terms of utilization, and that was really at the back of the resurgence of demand after the pilot shortage market phenomenon. We are also thinking that we are going to see the same type of growth all the way to 2026, which is giving rise really to a lot of demand in services—material demand, MRO, heavy maintenance services, but also technical engineering services as well.
So obviously, we've had to adapt ourselves to this bubble of demand. We knew it was coming, but it did come a lot higher than expectation. And it's really the result of two different elements.
Operators are putting a lot more airplanes in service because of mainline demand. But as well, there was this phenomenon of lazy schedule during the pilot shortage, whereby airlines were utilizing airframes at a lower utilization framework, and now we're operating at a much higher yield, which is creating now the demand for the heavy maintenance that everybody's been pushing to the right.
For tech services, material demand, and MRO services, we've had to increase in staffing internally on the engineering side to be able to deliver on engineering repairs and dispositions. We've done that both through permanent workforce within our headquarters in Canada, but also leveraging our offload capacities with partners in North America, as well as in countries where we're able to scale rapidly, such as India, to be able to support our operator base.
On the material side, right now the demand is at an all-time high. It is also in a context where supply chain has still not, believe it or not, fully recovered from COVID-19. So, there is a gap between demand and supply at the moment, and we are looking at leveraging both increasing material stock holdings, but also offering alternatives to the customers with some new serviceable material, as well as looking at expanding on internal manufacturing and insourcing for some of the commodities where we're seeing some stress and difficulties in supply.
MHIRJ: Going back to technical services, I know that over the past several months your team has been working very closely with PSA and SkyWest on really being involved in day-to-day operations with those teams. Tell us a little bit about what that means and how it's going.
Amel: What we are seeing is that our customers are experiencing difficulties with workforce, with labor, so this comes in the form of a lot of juniorism. I think after COVID-19 and after the phenomenon of pilot shortage, airlines have lost experience within their workforce. And so juniorism, coupled with a lot of turnover in the workforce, has created a bit of stress within an operator base on availability of knowledge.
What we’ve done is adapt ourselves to be integrated a lot more vertically within the airlines, offering to actually fill that gap for some time—or whichever time they need it—for them to be able to ramp back up.
So specifically with PSA, we've partnered with PSA in order to continue to support them under our DAO authority when it comes to repair and dispositioning on the engineering side, but also support on the FAR 121 operations as well—where our workforce is integrated with the PSA airline within their day-to-day technical and engineering dispositioning need.
It's working very well. We're hoping it's going to continue over the next few years, and we're hoping to do a lot more of that with other operators. Our goal is to continue finding solutions to fulfill some of the gaps our customers are experiencing in this context where experience and skilled labor is really scarce.
MHIRJ: We have skilled labor within our team, so are we offering those services to our customers who need it most?
Amel: Yes. We have a stable and growing technical workforce, and experience in commercial aviation. All of this is not agnostic to the CRJ platform, but our focus today is on the CRJ considering the fact that there is a high demand that our customers need us.
MHIRJ: Amel, you come from a family of aviation. I believe your father built a tremendous career in the airline business, and now, here you are building this tremendous career as an executive in our wonderful industry. Tell us a little bit about what you enjoy the most. What keeps you inspired day to day and working in this fast-paced industry that we love?
Amel: It's just an industry of excitement. We move people. Supporting a platform that allows individuals to connect, that allows individuals to engage into leisure activities, is just extremely motivating and very exciting. For me, it's all about the people. We have a group that is a bunch of individuals who are extremely passionate about the industry and work, day in, day out for their customers. That coupled together couldn't be a better combination for a career. I feel really grateful to be part of this.
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