EirTrade Aviation has acquired a former Air Transat Airbus A330, registration C-GUFR, for teardown at its AFRA-accredited disassembly facility at Ireland West Airport Knock, adding another widebody to a used serviceable material programme that has become an increasingly important source of A330 parts as supply chains for the type stay tight.
The components recovered from the airframe will be made available to A330 operators and MRO providers, with EirTrade positioning the acquisition as a direct response to the parts shortages and lead-time pressure that have been dogging widebody maintenance programmes industry-wide. As the company put it, strategically positioned teardown programmes are becoming an increasingly important source of reliable component availability for the A330 fleet. With production of the type winding down, the fleet will lean more heavily on recycled and recovered parts in the years ahead.
This is not EirTrade’s first A330 project at Knock. The company already manages the full lifecycle of a batch of A330-300s acquired by Acorn Capital Management, and has been steadily building out its widebody teardown capability at the West of Ireland site alongside its narrowbody work.
The Air Transat acquisition lands against the backdrop of a much larger build-out at Knock. EirTrade has secured planning permission to roughly quintuple the size of its teardown facility there, with construction due to get under way this year. It is a sizeable bet on Ireland West Airport as a hub for aircraft disassembly, reinforcing Knock’s growing role in the aviation aftermarket alongside its passenger operations.
Between the expanded footprint and a steady flow of end-of-life widebodies coming through the door, EirTrade looks to be positioning Knock as one of Europe’s more significant sources of A330 material at exactly the point the wider industry needs it most.
