RE: Váradi opinion19 Nov 2025 08:08
Maintaining an older fleet will be more expensive due to several factors. Does not have to be corrosion but simply you will have much more findings coming out from routine inspections. Then you might need to contact OEM for engineering support, waiting for their evaluation, waiting for parts. Much more sheet metal, composite, non routine work, more material cost ,Longer TAT etc. Then you have the factor that an airline with the size of WIZZ and especially RYR is running their base maintenance lines parallel and nose to tail. Especially in winter there are several parallel lines ongoing. Now, if you have a 15-20 years old aircraft coming into the hangar you either plan for a longer TAT giving some buffer for extra findings, or you will run into TAT extension more often. So you either need more lines in parallel (contracted at an MRO) to fill all aircraft into the program or you mess up your schedule with TAT extensions while the next aircraft are becoming due.
Then you have the component maintenance part there. Usually they use pool contracts with suppliers and exchanging rectified components from the pool. If you have an older aircraft in the pool the price goes up. You pay more per flight hour or per cycle and the exchange fee is also more expensive.
For large parts like engines, LDG, APU you pay anyway. If you keep the aircraft long enough you manage for yourself, if not you simply pay pro rate to the lessor the cost of these future events.
So all in all maintaining an older fleet is more expensive simple as that. But you put this against the cost of ownership which is much cheaper for an older fleet. Or a leased fleet will require maintenance work driven by the lease contract not the maintenance manual, resulting extra cost. In my view it depends on the company how they set up their organization. RYR is really effective with its hangar maintenance and doing it inhouse via join ventures plus some external providers. And doing this on their own aircraft. So they can maintain an older fleet really effectively. If you fully rely on external providers and you have several hundred aircraft you better keep the fleet age down or you start to invest in your inhouse MRO capabilities. Which I think WIZZ will do in near future anyway.
So I think what really matters is the combination of these cost elements and the result from that equation. Not individual cost lines. You put the maintenance cost against the cost of ownership (leased/not leased/old/young) that is visible in the ex-fuel CASK. You have the fuel CASK (fuel efficiency old vs new ac), on time performance and so on. You can chose either way but you need to do it right. That's the point.
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