Monarch Aircraft Engineering goes bust
Emilie Drab
 le 16/01/2019 , Maintenance aéronautique
Monarch Aircraft Engineering (MAEL) survived the collapse of Monarch Airlines for barely one year, showing just how hard it is to survive in the maintenance sector as a small, independent MRO. On 4th January, the consulting firm KPMG announced that the maintenance company was in insolvency as it was "not viable in its current form" and had been placed under the control of three administrators tasked with selling or liquidating its activities.
Most inline maintenance operations were transferred to other companies at the start of the new year. Therefore, most activities at Gatwick, Birmingham, East Midlands, Newcastle and Glasgow are now in the hands of the Morson group (as well as Boeing for certain activities at Gatwick), while operations at Luton now belong to Storm Aviation. Some of the activities at Birmingham and the activities at Manchester had already been transferred to Flybe after its contract finished at the end of November. 182 jobs have been saved thanks to these agreements.
The outcome is less positive for the base maintenance sector (at Luton and Birmingham). Given the major losses and the lack of interest from investors, KPMG decided just to suspend activities. Some 250 people have been made redundant and the consulting company is now working to sell the facilities.
This sector is the one which has suffered the most from the consequences of the restructuring which was carried out until October 2018. In an attempt to shed the debt and certain obligations related to the collapse of Monarch Airlines, MAEL carried out a restructuring plan which included a rescue procedure. But this had the opposite effect: some customers wanted to reduce their volume or even cancel their co-operation with the MRO company, making its situation worse. And yet Greybull Capital had taken control of the company in October, promising it a fine future and a busy 2019.
However, the search for new buyers continues for the company's last two divisions, technical support (CAMO - Continuing Airworthiness Management Organisation), which employs 27 people and manages the operational condition of 33 aircraft for eight customers, and training.
The Unite union has announced that it will be launching a formal complaints procedure as the company had omitted to consult its employees before announcing a liquidation which will cost 450 of the 580 jobs that MAEL had in the United Kingdom and Europe. Calling this a "terrible blow" for the Luton economy, the union stated that "the workers concerned have skills which are needed" in the maintenance market and appealed to other MRO companies "to ensure that the industry does not lose vital engineering skills".
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