ADE Reports Growing Third-Party Work

Alex Derber December 06, 2023

Asia Digital Engineering, the maintenance arm of AirAsia parent Capital A, has continued its growth in the third quarter of 2023.

The company posted its highest ever EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) profit of MYR43 million ($9.2 million), more than double the prior-year total.

Capital A says that “increased flight activity resulted in continuous demand for MRO services”.

To sustain its momentum, Asia Digital Engineering (ADE) plans to have six lines ready at its KLIA Aeropolis hangar in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia by the first half of 2024, with the remainder to be ready before the end of that year.

In 2022 Capital A announced plans to build 380,000sq-ft of MRO facilities at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA), a project that it expected to complete within two years.

Meanwhile, all seven of its existing lines are fully booked until Sept. 2024, and the company expects its full-year EBITDA to be double that of 2022, while in 2024 it expects third-party customers to exceed 15% of total revenue.

To support the operations of the various Air Asia airlines in Southeast Asia, ADE is on track to expand its line maintenance operations in Indonesia, the Philippines and Cambodia in the first quarter of next year.

In November, ADE announced that it has received Part 145 maintenance organization approval from EASA.

It also told Aviation Week that it was handling about 40% of the heavy maintenance work for its parent airline group, and in its latest results reported that ADE had performed about 100 C checks in its first 30 months of operations.