Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Lufthansa Technik subsidiary BizJet International Sales and Support has embarked on a large-scale expansion of its commercial engine MRO business as the company’s business-jet and VIP interior completions operations come to an end. Long a provider of engine MRO for Rolls-Royce Speys and Tays powering Gulfstream business jets, BizJet International quietly began performing MRO work—mainly by providing mobile engine services—on IAE V2500 turbofan engines for one major customer about a year ago. Now it plans to expand its V2500 business substantially in the three-year period from 2018 through 2020: “We’re open to the whole market,” BizJet president and CEO Volker Magunna told AIN.

Knowing that parent Lufthansa Technik (LHT) was going to concentrate all of the group’s completions work at its massive MRO facility in Hamburg, Germany, Magunna began establishing a V2500 MRO shop at BizJet International as a strategic addition to LHT’s global network of engine-MRO facilities. LHT is planning for BizJet International’s much-expanded facilities, particularly to complement the group’s existing engine-MRO shops in Hamburg and Montréal, he said.

“There is no other independent V2500 shop in the United States, so the market potential is very high,” said Magunna. BizJet International primarily seeks commercial operators of V2500 engines powering Airbus A320ceo-family aircraft as customers, but the company will also handle V2500 MRO work for VIP and business-aviation operators of Airbus ACJ corporate versions, he said.

BizJet International is targeting not only North American carriers as customers but also Latin America-based airlines, which together operate many hundreds of A320-family jets. As a result, Magunna sees enormous combined market potential in North and South America for BizJet’s V2500 MRO services.

Under its parent’s direction, BizJet International intends to expand its engine-MRO capabilities even further in the next few years by adding the CFM56-B to its portfolio, according to Magunna. The other engine type that powers the A320ceo family, the CFM56-5B, controls a majority share of the huge A320ceo engine market. The company does not rule out potentially adding the CFM56-7B models powering all Boeing 737NGs to its MRO portfolio in the future. But while “the CFM56-7 fleet is bigger in the U.S. [than the CFM56-5B]…it is very modern” because most 737NGs operated by U.S. carriers are young, said Magunna.

To accommodate its engine-MRO ramp-up, BizJet has begun renovating the 116,547-square-foot hangar in which it performed its interior completions to accommodate 28 new engine bays. They will add to eight engine bays it now maintains in a 223,150-square-foot facility it uses for Spey and Tay MRO, back shops, and offices. By 2019, when BizJet reopens the hangar now under renovation, it will have 30 engine bays available. Others will become active later.