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General Electric expands aviation presence in Malaysia
October 1st 2018
Last month, now former GE chairman and CEO, John Flannery, signed an agreement in the presence pf Malaysian prime minister, Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad, and several government ministers that committed the U.S. conglomerate to a US$80 million investment in GE Engines Services Malaysia (GEESM) as well as the establishment of a global IT service desk at GE’s Malaysian headquarters. Read More »
GEESM will enter into a long-term tenancy with a subsidiary of the Malaysia Aviation Group Berhad, the parent of restructured Malaysia Airlines Berhad, at facilities to be built adjacent to Kuala Lumpur’s Subang aviation centre. The new workshop, to be equipped to the highest tooling and technological standards, will conduct MRO on joint venture CFM’s LEAP engines. It will be GE’s first workshop outside the U.S. to conduct such services. LEAP engines power single aisle A320beo, the B737s and China’s C919.
Flannery said: “GE has a long history of partnership in Malaysia and we want to see this relationship continue. The GEESM Centre of Excellence is one of our flagship facilities in the region and the renewed lease agreement is a testament to the great work delivered by local talent.
“The establishment of the GE Global IT Service Desk in Kuala Lumpur further represents our beiief in the hugely beneficial shared future that Malaysia, GE and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) have ahead of us.”
GE’s Malaysian Global Help Desk is one of three centres across the globe. Its 130 staff will provide 24/7 dual English-Chinese support for GE customers worldwide when it opens next month.
The potential of the engine leasing and engine MRO sectors for conglomerates such as GE was highlighted with release of a recent World Routes survey that said destinations serviced by single aisle aircraft were the fastest growing routes in the Asia-Pacific.
Top of the Routes table for the busiest routes on the planet were Seoul’s Gimpo to the country’s holiday island of Jeju, with 180 scheduled flights daily and a reported 13.4 million passengers carried last year. The remaining nine airports in the table were all from the Asia-Pacific and all short haul journeys.
In the same survey, the nine out the ten fastest growing scheduled airports routes in the world were from the region and also short haul flights. Only Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah-Riyadh route made the top ten at number eight, tied with Jakarta-Kulanamu.
The Asia-Pacific also swept the table for the busiest scheduled international routes in the world. Top scorer was Hong Kong with five of the busiest international routes in the world. New York’s JFK-London Heathrow was the only non-Asia-Pacific route in the top ten, positioned at number 9.
The fastest growing scheduled air routes in the world in 2017 were: Bangkok-Survarnabhumi-Chiang Mai (36%), Seoul Incheon-Kansai (30.3%), Jakarta-Kuala Lumpur (29.4%), Delhi-Pune (20.6%), Chengdu-Shenzhen (16.8%), Hong Kong-Shanghai (15.5%), Bangkok-Survarnabhumi-Phuket (14.9%), Jeddah-Riyadh (13.9%), Jakarta-Kualanamu (13.9%) and Kolkata-Delhi (13.4%).
