IDEX: Nothing off about this GTF MRO deal

The 20-year agreement will see UAE engine overhaul specialist Sanad operating a new MRO facility for P&W’s geared turbofan (GTF) range of engines. 

Under the agreement signed by Raytheon, P&W, Sanad, the latter’s parent company Mubadala and the UAE’s Tawazun Council, which is the interface between Raytheon and the UAE government, the new overhaul centre at Al Ain Aerospace Park in Abu Dhabi will be able to handle up to 350 engine shop visits a year once it opens in Q3 2028.

The new centre will help to fulfil Raytheon’s offset obligations to the UAE and is unusual in being a civil project offsetting military purchases made by the UAE.

The agreement was signed last week but officially announced at IDEX yesterday.

“Pratt & Whitney have been talking to Sanad about developing our relationship with them,” said Marc Meredith, P&W VP of GTF commercial after-market. 

The deal took more than two years to bring to fruition and benefited from P&W’s decade-long relationship with Sanad, which has an MRO operation for V2500 engines at an existing site beside Abu Dhabi International Airport.

“This is a really exciting, generational project, both for us and for them,” Meredith said. It had been helped by the strong connection with Sanad’s MD and Group CEO, Mansoor Janahi.

It became apparent during negotiations that the scale of GTF work would require a new site, rather than expanding Sanad’s existing facility. The Al Ain plant is likely to generate several hundred jobs.

Given the scale of future GTF production: “There is a massive opportunity in front of us,” Meredith added.