EasyJet upkeep association shuts down at Stansted

Robert Lea: Industrial editor & , : {}

SR Technics, the upkeep association that oversees the easyJet fleet, is to close operations at Stansted airport, throwing 345 aviation engineers out of work.

The company, that is tranquil by Mubadala Development, the investment arm of the Abu Dhabi Government, has told workers that it is offered the franchise at the airfield and relocating the operation to the Zurich headquarters.

SR Technics is the largest maintenance, correct and renovate operation at Stansted, that handles some-more than twenty million passengers a year.

The preference to give up the airfield came fast after an agreement with easyJet over a cost-cutting scheme.

Related LinksRyanair to condense Stansted flights by 30%EasyJet flies in to charge over vacating chiefs reward

As piece of easyJets joining to have cuts of �190 million a year opposite the commercial operation by 2012, the bill airline, that last year reported a pointy dump in profits, negotiated most tougher conditions in an 11-year �1 billion agreement in in between the dual businesses. The conduit pronounced that the new agreement will see easyJet cut upkeep costs on the stipulate by �175 million over the life, or about �17 million a year.

In due course, all of easyJets aircraft upkeep opposite the 180-strong swift will be carried out at a new operation in Malta.

SR Technics will keep usually a line upkeep operation at Stansted, behaving orthodox pre-flight checks on aircraft.

SR Technics has been by uneasy times over the past decade or so. It was creatively the engineering and upkeep arm of Swissair. After that airline collapsed following the aviation industry unemployment caused by the Sep eleven attacks, the SR Technics operation was discovered in a buyout led by 3i, the in isolation equity group.

The Stansted upkeep workers were once piece of the UK and Irish airline upkeep operations of FLS Industries, that was sole to SR Technics in 2004.

SR Technics itself was afterwards sole by 3i in 2006 to an Abu Dhabi-Dubai consortium. Last year Mubadala paid for out piece of the Dubai-owned interests to take carry out of the company.

A orator for SR Technics pronounced that the closure of Stansted comes after it close the Dublin operations with the loss of 1,100 jobs. It is not viable to have dual operations Stansted and Zurich only one and half hours moody time in in between them, he said.

Chris Jones, informal military officer of the Unite union, said: The men are indignant and undone that their jobs are being exported abroad by an expanding company, that refuses to even cruise alternatives to pursuit cuts.