Virgin Atlantic yesterday cancelled a large maintenance contract with FLS Aerospace, the former TEAM Aer Lingus, at Dublin Airport.
As the global aviation crisis forced Aer Lingus to scale back capacity by a quarter, Virgin indicated to FLS that it would not require maintenance work on five Boeing 747-200 aircraft that it grounded on Monday. An FLS spokeswoman said the firm normally expected to conduct such work on 200 aircraft each year.
The value of business due to be taken up in January by Virgin is unknown, but it will hit FLS at a bad time. The company's Dublin operation is said to be marginally profitable, but other bases in Britain and Denmark are not.
Aviation sources believe maintenance work could cost $500,000 (€461,050) to $2 million per aircraft depending on the scale of the check. It is likely that minor maintenance work on two Aer Lingus Airbus A320 aircraft will be cancelled after the State airline introduced radical cutbacks. FLS's spokeswoman said the company had one other customer which concentrated on the Atlantic routes, though she would not name it.
When asked how the latest development might affect staff she said the company had "absolutely no plans for redundancies at this stage". It planned to redirect business to its component repair and management divisions and line maintenance operation.
US group United Technologies was in advanced discussions to purchase FLS Aerospace this summer. It is not known whether the US attacks will affect that deal.
