ATCL Plane
About 800,000 US Dollar will be saved per year following a decision by Air Tanzania Company Limited (ATCL) to use its engineers to repair its airplanes instead of sending them abroad.
The ATCL’s Technical Director, Mr John Ringo, said this in Dar es Salaam over the weekend when briefing reporters on maintenance development of national flag carrier airplane with registration number DASH 8-300, saying the airplane would start flying after completion of the maintenance in May this year.
“If an airplane is to be sent to South Africa for maintenance, the company would pay an engineer about 50 to 80 US Dollar per hour,” he said adding: “The company had to pay about 800,000 US Dollar for its airplanes last year.”
However, the technical director noted that unavailability of spare parts was posing great challenge for the local workshop which went bankrupt during the partnership with South African Airways from late 1990s to mid 2000s.
“We are doing all kinds of maintenance…the workshop also receives airplanes for maintenance from outside the country,” he stated. Mr Ringo said his workshop would receive an airplane owned by the Kenya based ADC Company for maintenance, adding that huge amount of money is saved since the company’s workshop utilizes its experts.
He noted that the company was using the workshop when it owned a Boeing 737 during the ATCL’s partnership with SAA.
Source Tanzania Daily News
