How Asia can fulfil its potential as the capital of MRO by the 2040s
Recruitment of skilled workers, continued automation and digitalisation of processes, and strategic planning are vital to the continent's efforts over the next two decades.
Indian passenger numbers on domestic routes increased by 6.12 percent to 161.3 million in 2024.
It sounds like a lot, but compared to China, it’s relatively modest in comparison. Over the 2025 Spring Festival travel season (Jan 14-Feb 22), 90 million domestic-bound passengers took to the skies, following on from a record-breaking 2024, in which the Chinese civil aviation industry handled 730 million passenger journeys – an annual increase of 18 percent.
Maybe it’s no coincidence that the number of middle-class people in China stands at a similar level: close to 700 million following an 8.7 percent rise in 2024. Together, China and India accounted for over half of the 113 million newly-middle class people in the world in 2024.
The pressure is accordingly on both countries’ civil aviation sectors to keep up with the soaring demand over the next two decades – not just the airports and airlines, but also its MRO (Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul) operators, which will face fierce global competition in the aerospace aftermarkets.
Led by China, which is projected to control the world's largest MRO market by 2043, projections favour Asia to dominate, but the continent’s MRO industry still faces significant challenges to achieve this forecast.
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Aircraft MRO, like many global industries, will need a substantial increase in skilled workers to keep up with the demand over the next two decades: an extra 690,000 technicians, according to an Airbus forecast.
Asian MROs will face intense competition from other industries, and accordingly they will need to scale up their graduate outreach, training programs, certification pathways and retention strategies to meet this surge in demand – but will this be enough?
The answer is that Asian MROs cannot depend on their domestic markets alone and must also recruit from overseas. Fortunately, here, they have an ace or two up their sleeves.
Working in MRO lends itself well to travel, and the countries that most appeal to international travellers will hold an advantage – not just those that remove red tape (for digital nomads etc) and invest in welcome initiatives, but countries that are inviting to visit, or strategically located near other countries of interest.
Some 76 percent of Gen Zs (aged 18 to 28) are more interested in travel than they used to be, so the appeal of your country as a destination to work in cannot be underestimated, and it can always be improved.
According to InterNations, five of the world's top ten countries for internationals to live and work in are in Asia.
If Asian MROs can sell the appeal of working abroad to potential employees, they can avoid the forecast shortages and thrive well into the future.
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Why MROs are embracing automation and digitalisation
Another solution to the projected shortages in skilled workers is to embrace automation.
And certainly, the industry has quickly digitalised to the extent that most MRO workers are plugged into the system via a handheld, working in collaboration with the airlines and using AI-powered predictive maintenance.
Using AI to monitor the performance of the aircraft enables the MRO operatives, using a wide range of tools such as real-time data analytics and digital twins, to detect aircraft issues before they become problems – a significant cost saving for the industry.
According to Deloitte, predictive maintenance can enable a 5-15 percent saving in facility downtime, a 5-20 percent increase in labour productivity and a 5-20 percent reduction in operational costs – among other benefits.
AR, meanwhile, is a handy tool for remote inspections when digital monitoring is unable to tell the whole story – and many MRO processes have become seamless.
Nevertheless, personnel are a requisite for the installation and servicing of aircraft parts – there’s only so much that can be accomplished digitally from a remote location.
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Easier when governance is on your side
For smaller Asian countries whose MRO industries face stiff competition from major international players with a global reach, it might make sense to outsource their MRO needs through a partnership with a major player. But it’s not impossible to become one themselves.
Two countries to emerge as significant MRO locations this century are Singapore and Vietnam. Both have taken advantage of highly strategic locations – nothing beats being at the centre of the global supply chain – and managed to localise manufacturing and diversify their network of suppliers.
Governmental support has been crucial to them becoming major hubs, as the availability of tax breaks, subsidies and direct investment will have a major influence on how quickly the MRO sector expands.
With governance on your side comes an interest in lobbying regional organisations, such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), to ensure red tape is kept to a minimum through the harmonisation of inter-regional regulations and certification recognition requirements.
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SATAIR TAKEAWAY
China will soon be the world's largest MRO market, with other Asian hubs – most notably in the strategically-advantaged Middle East – not far behind.
To fulfil this forecast, the recruitment of skilled personnel, adoption of innovative technologies and support of effective governance will play crucial roles, and in Asia the MROs have been scaling up their ecosystems, expanding their hangar capacity, increasing their local manufacturing capacity and adding satellite facilities and regional partnerships.
All eyes are on Asia because so many of its countries are strategically located, ultimately enabling them to optimise the logistics of their supply chain.
As it always has been, time will continue to be the most precious resource in the MRO industry.