Flightpath with Alok
Enda Swan | Avolon
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Episode notes
This podcast marks the 5th episode of Flightpath with Alok. Today, we hear from Enda Swan, Head of Technical with one of the world's largest aircraft leasing companies, Avolon. Enda has invested more than twenty years building a holistic career, which includes airline, MRO, and aircraft leasing platform knowledge, experience and expertise. As Avolon’s Head of Technical, Enda is responsible for oversight of all aspects of building new aircraft, transitioning aircraft from operator to operator, managing AOG, cargo conversion programs, as well as all material supply needed to support the Avolon operation. Enda speaks to Alok about the early years and what it was like growing up on a farm in rural Ireland; how someone with no exposure to air travel or aviation found their way into the industry, and the unlikely event that started the ball rolling. For those young professionals that may have a natural aptitude or leaning towards engineering, Enda’s experience certainly illustrates a great example of how one can find a fun and exciting career in the aircraft leasing sector; one which offers the next generation of young executives the purpose and fulfilment they seek.
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Transcript
Alok: This episode you are about to hear or watch, for me personally it is special, because my own background is aircraft engineering. And the gentleman who I’m interviewing today, he is from a technical engineering background himself. So I am going enjoy this podcast. I am going to really have fun while asking questions and learning, and I hope you have fun too, thank you!
Enda, thankyou for joining me for this episode five of my podcast Flight Path with Alok. It's a pleasure to have you. All the way joining me from Dublin. I'm recording you from Bangalore right now and you know to start with straight up maybe an intro about yourself.
Enda Swan: Absolutely. Sure. Look, and look, it's a great pleasure to be able to join you on this podcast. I've been listening to the past episodes. I've enjoyed them all tremendously. Some ex bosses along the way. So, yeah, I'm Head of Technical in Avolon now. So it's a role that I'm very proud of at the moment. And I've been working in this role since October last year. But to give you a bit of background and tell you about how I started career, where I came from. So I guess starting way back to when I was a child, I grew up in rural Ireland. Again, very, very agricultural, heavy teamed upbringing. So I worked most of my childhood and most of my teenage summers on farms. And I guess it was there while I really, I really learned to be hands on with everything I could be. I loved getting down and dirty with everything, trying to fix machines, loved trying to figure out how a machine worked, an operating machine. So I really had a fondness for engineering and how everything came together to work. So oddly enough, I didn't have any exposure to aviation at all as a child. The family I grew up in, again, agricultural background, we didn’t, we never really traveled far for family holidays. It was always very local. So I never had any exposure to airports, aircraft, airplanes, anything to do with flying. So my interest in aviation came from a very bizarre place. Back when the first Gulf War kicked off, I was fascinated by the TV coverage of the first Gulf War. I used to sit in the evening time looking at the news reports, watching in amazement watching aircraft carriers, aircraft taking off from aircraft carriers, attack helicopters, all the sort of aviation themed war instruments, I suppose. Which is a terrible thing to say that that's where my interest in aviation came from.
But that's what really awoke my sort of attention to aviation. As it sort of progressed then, I do know the closest I ever got to aircraft was really just sitting at home and looking up at the sky and see contrails going over my head and just wondering, you know, trying to figure out because I did have a love for geography as well. So I'd always try to figure out where was north and where was east, where was west, where was an aircraft coming from, where was it going, who was on that aircraft? I was just fascinated by it. But, again, I had no exposure to it. So it was just a sort of a desire that I had to get into it, but I had no real clear idea how I was going to get into aviation. I worked very hard in school. I was a good student, I wanted to get ahead in life. So I wanted to, I knew that I wouldn't have a really good career in my locality, in agricultural background or in any other roles that really were available in the countryside where I was born. So I knew I had to work hard in school to get to university and make a career for myself. Engineering was always going to be the direction of travel for me. And as I progressed through school, my choices were always sort of civil engineer, mechanical engineer themed. And as I was approaching my final exams in my school, and in Ireland, the final exams, you're sort of rewarded with points for, with how good you do for those exams. And all of your points add up to a total. And that's what sort of gets you into the courses that you apply for in the universities. So all of my top 10 courses would have been, as I said, engineering courses. But we had an absent teacher one day. So we had a free class in school and the career guidance teacher was actually looking after us. And, I was talking to him during the class and I told him about how I was interested in aviation. And he told me about this new course in the University of Limerick called aeronautical engineering. It was about three or four years old at that stage. And that I should look into it. So I did. I looked into it. The points were a little bit stretchy for me. I thought I'd be under a little bit of pressure to make those points to qualify for that course. But I put it number one on my list. And as I said, worked and worked and worked my socks off. And managed to get the point. So I was lucky enough, I qualified and got a place at the University of Limerick.
But I nearly didn't make it there because the other side of my aviation desire was to fly aircraft. And that summer between school and university, Aer Lingus had offered up some cadetships for pilots. And there was about 2,000 young boys and girls applied for that year. And I was one of them. I don't very well. I got down to like the last 50 out of 2000. So I don't very well in the process. But when I got to the when I got to the final stages, the last few interviews, my I guess my lack of exposure to commercial aviation, my lack of exposure to travel, my lack of knowledge about Aer Lingus, what type of aircrafts they flew, how aircraft operated sort of was to my detriment. And I didn't get that role. But happy enough, went off to Limerick to start my training as an aeronautical engineer. So that was a four year course in Limerick and part of that course was we had to do cooperative education, which was a nine month placement with an OEM or an MRO or some sort of aviation themed company. And luckily for me, I got a placement in Shannon Aerospace in Shannon, County Clare, Ireland, and I guess like many people who work in aviation in Ireland, for sure, that have come through Shannon, once you once you sort of live and breathe Shannon for a few weeks or a few months, it gets into your system. And that's exactly what happened to me with Shannon, with Shannon Aerospace, with MROs, just being at a live airport, being able to get onto aircraft as I wanted to, being able to watch aircraft take off and land, the smell of jet fuel, it just, you know, it had me at that point. I knew at that point that sort of MRO, maintenance, commercial aircraft was the side of the industry I wanted to get into rather than design engineering or something like that.
So I enjoyed my time in Shannon immensely, but really it was at that point that I really realized what area I wanted to go to when I finished university. A couple of years later, graduated out of university. There's a few very famous people in aircraft leasing that came from my class. I won't mention any names, but we had a good class of about 20 or 25 people that graduated. And luckily for me, I had an offer from FLSA aerospace at Dublin Airport to start a job in their MRO after university. And I was so excited and so anxious to get started that I took two weeks off between university and starting my career. I graduated at the end of May and I was working in Dublin Airport by the middle of June. Took me just two weeks to transition. So into Dublin Airport, again, now I had full on-teddered access to six hangars, to a really busy live international airport, the ramp, the smell of jet fuel, watching passengers, looking at aircraft taking off every day. It was just it was fantastic. It was a dream for me that first job at Dublin Airport. It was a real dream job for me. I began working in the engineering department as a systems engineer. And what FLS Aerospace did was we were a big MRO, number one. We had six hangars in Dublin. And then we had hangars in, I think, London, Gatwick and in Copenhagen and Manchester as well. But we had a very big engineering technical services team. And technical services for anybody who doesn't know, what we did was we provided a service for airlines where we were the engineering department for an airline. So we looked after Aer Lingus A330 and A320, family aircraft, technical services, Futura, Pegasus. And what technical services was, was evaluating service bulletins, evaluating airworthiness directives, issuing engineering orders, answering query notes from the hangar floor as to how to fix a problem. And it was fantastic exposure to the airline industry as well. So then FLS turned into SR Technics. There was a whole other story there. But luckily for me, seven years later, 2007, one of my ex-classmates from university, had left a couple of years earlier to join Oryx Aviation, a leasing company. And that's something that I had seen when I was at SR Technics all the time was people leaving to join leasing companies. And I didn't really know exactly what a leasing company was, but I remember in our engineering team, there was a fear of leasing companies. There was a fear of getting a job at a leasing company and having to pack your bag and say goodbye to your family and never see them again. And then as soon as you get home with a new ticket, then you are gone again.
So a lot of people were really afraid of joining leasing companies. But my friend who had joined Oryx phoned me. He said, look, Oryx are hiring. We think you'd be a good fit. Luckily for me, I knew two of the technical bosses in Oryx. So Donal Lowry was engineering manager at Aer Lingus before moving to be the Head of technical in Oryx and then Paddy Ryan was head of planning in Shannon Aerospace when I was there before becoming into Oryx. So I knew the guys very well. Did an interview, interviewed with Mr. Power, who was your last podcast guest. And luckily for me, Oryx offered me a job. So I took a leap of faith. I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. I sat down at the time with my fiancee Ruth, who's now my wife, and we discussed it and we said, yeah, look, let's give it a go, I mean, you know, I couldn't really define how much travel I do, what the job is going to be. I knew there was going to be some travel, but we said it's for your career, so let's do it.
So 2007 joined Oryx Aviation as a technical services manager and just really looking after all sorts of aspects of the technical side of aircraft leasing. And it was there where I started to transition aircraft. And I spent, I didn't spend a lot of time on the road, but I spent a lot more time on the road for sure. It wasn't as bad as what people made it out to be. But at the same time, you did have to spend long chunks of time away from home. So I spent a lot of time in Istanbul, Manchester, Prague, Hanover, a lot of time in Russia actually as well, just transitioning aircraft from one operator to another. But I learned a huge amount in Oryx. So Oryx was a great learning place for a lot of people in aircraft leasing now, for really just connecting the technical side of aviation. And the commercial side of aviation, bringing it together and really seeing how, you know, it's much more than just the nuts and bolts of aircraft and keeping them moving. It's also all of the financial side behind us and how money was made from aircraft. But also in Oryx aviation, it was a really, a really good grounding to accountability and to being, you know, really taking it to really taking charge of a project, owning a project and delivering on that project. And I think that's a reason why so many good technical people, for sure, came from Oryx. But during my time in Oryx, I transitioned a number of old A320s from Thomas Cook airline in Manchester Airport. And the two technical managers at Thomas Cook happened to be two gentlemen called Lucas Molen and Ian Clark, who we all know very well.
So I took those aircraft back from Thomas Cook in Manchester, kept redelivering aircraft for Oryx. I was up in Presswick a few years after that, redelivering an aircraft from Ryner and I got a phone call and it was a certain Ian Clark from, used to work in Thomas Cook and he had joined this fantastic new leasing company that had been started in Dublin in 2010. And we had read all the reports and read all the news about this new company called Avolon that was, you know, it was bringing in the funds that were bringing in and the order books with Boeing and the order books with Airbus. And we were reading these stories thinking this was a great place to work. So what had happened was that Lucas Mullen became the Chief Technical Officer in Avolon, the first chief technical officer in Avolon. And then, a couple of years later, he brought over Ian Clark to help him. So Lucas and Ian were now from Thomas Cook in Avolon. And Ian called me and he said, look, we're hiring. We're going to expand the technical team in Avolon. I remember you from the Manchester days. Would you be interested?
So it took me about a second and a half, I would say, to think that one over. I was straight on the phone to Lucas. Set up my interviews, went through a whole day of interviews in Avolon. At that time, Avolon interviews were maybe six or seven interviews for a whole day. And it was one after another. And at the end of the day, you got to sit down with Donal Slattery and John Higgins for an hour. And that was very interesting. But after a few hiccups, I'd say, I managed to get into Avolon. And at that time, our technical team was, I think, four or five, six people. And we were really jacks of all trades. We were, we done a bit of everything. So we weren't big enough to expand into specialized roles. We were building new aircraft. We were delivering new aircraft. We were beginning to plan transitioning of older aircraft. We were doing bits and pieces of everything, asset management, the whole lot. And so it was an awful lot different to Oryx because Oryx was an established leasing company transitioning aircraft that were naturally coming off lease.
Avolon in 2014 were only four years old, so there was very little transition activity. It was all very exciting. It was, you know, quick trips abroad with marketing people to secure sale and lease back deals or secure the placement of an aircraft or deliver a new aircraft. It was very exciting work, but lots of travel. But it was really, really enjoyable. Like I remember leaving Dublin a number of times on a Sunday evening, flying to Ho Chi Minh City for maybe be there on a Monday after Monday evening, have meetings all day Tuesday, be on a plane Tuesday evening back in Dublin on Wednesday at lunchtime. And it was lots of that. It was just, you know, it was lots of travel and very quick trips, but it was really, really exciting.
And then Avolon grew. So Avolon went public, then H&A, the Chinese large airline that they bought us out in 2016. And then we took on HACAC aviation, then we took on CIT aviation in 2017. And it was at that point that Avolon just, the technical, the need for a big technical team was there now. The need to split the team into different roles, different areas became very apparent. Luckily for me, I had shown a real interest in new aircraft. So I was asked to sort of be part of a new aircraft team. So I was second in command in a team full of people who built new aircraft, delivered new aircraft, but also run the engineering team, who the engineering team in a leasing company really is the team that changes the spec of the aircraft, from one airline spec to another during a transition. Worked in that team then from 2017, honoured the whole time up until last year. And last year, at that time, Chief Technical Officer Felipe Campos was promoted to Chief Operating Officer here in Dublin. And luckily for me, I got the role of Head of Technical in Avolon at that point. So, something I've been doing for the last six, seven months, enjoying every moment of it, but extremely, extremely busy.
Alok: Excellent. If I may just say so, you know, hard work is what you do and luck is what you get in return. And
Enda Swan: Yeah, absolutely.
Alok: I think that's what has happened in your case. So congratulations on achieving that. And I know you have not named a few people and that's fine. Having said that, it's a small world, you know, like all the people you have named, few of them who you have named. We are all still connected with them and we are seeing them in various forms involved in the industry and still contributing, which is great. I don't want this to become an Oryx podcast, but coincidentally, the last conversation was also focusing a lot on Oryx for obvious reasons. And just a disclaimer, we are not being paid by Oryx.
Enda Swan: Yeah.
Alok: But we like the people who have come out of there, obviously. So it is great. And the people are still there. There is something I must share with you. For me, one of the reasons why I reached out to you to speak with you is, is because I am from technical background myself. I have been an aircraft engineer pretty much most of my life. And most of my working life, obviously, is what I mean. And I've been very close to the technical side of the business. And last few episodes which we have recorded in my podcast have focused on commercial, sales, business models. And I have been meaning to get into the nitty-gritty of tech. I think no better person than you, obviously, given what you're doing now at this big leasing company in which the tech ops is your responsibility. And that's one of the reasons. So for me, this podcast episode is really special because it's a subject I enjoy the most, apart from everything else.
Enda Swan: Probably the best subject to look.
Alok: Yeah, I still love it. I wish I could still go on the airplanes and inspect them. I wish I can. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to move on to some of the tech pieces of the business, you know? And we will see, we'll do a little back and forth and maybe touch upon some other generic subjects. I do intend to ask a little bit about Avolon also, given what you are doing in Avolon and that you have a key role in Avolon to play now. But I think first and foremost, what I want to understand from you is technical asset management. Now, in last few episodes, you have spoken about asset management and balance sheet lessors, asset management lessors and all. But what I want to understand is, in all these cases, there is a common factor, tech asset management, technical asset management.
Enda Swan: It's a great question because I think no matter what aircraft leasing company you walk into, asset management will have a different role in each one of them. But certainly, asset management for Avolon, it's really the management of our aircraft, our assets while they're on lease to somebody. So technical asset management for us is a vital part of the technical team. And that's not always the case in some other leasing companies. Other leasing companies will have an asset management team that, I guess, would be a bit like what we would see as contracts or customer engagement in Avolon, which is sort of utilizations and, and just managing the sort of all of the different tasks that are in the contract, all the different milestones. For Avolon, technical asset management is a portion of the technical work. And the portion of it that it is, it's managing the aircraft while it's on lease to one of our airline customers. So when the aircraft is on lease to one of our airline customers, there's a few different, a few very important role, a few very important tasks that have to be looked at constantly. So one would be, for example, management of maintenance reserves and maintenance events. So as an aircraft gets older, there are some very big milestone maintenance events that are carried out on the aircraft. It's a bit like taking your car to the garage for a service every year, every two years, whatever it is. For most aircraft, you have heavy airframe checks.
So on an Airbus aircraft, it's a six-year, a 12-year check. On a Boeing, it's probably eight, 10, 12 years along those lines. But these are heavier than normal structural checks. You have your landing gear overhaul, your APU overhaul, your engine performance restoration, and engine LLPs. So these are the big maintenance events. And when your airline customer performs these maintenance events, our asset management team will be the team that will look over these events and make sure that everything that has to be done in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions has been done. And it's been done per the right instruction. Once we are happy with the maintenance that it's been done in accordance with all of the proper instructions, we will then give the go ahead to refund the airline with any maintenance reserve pots that have been built up over the over the utilization of the aircraft to look after the maintenance, those maintenance events. So that's one of the prime roles for our technical asset management team. We have some other roles then.
So for example, we would also we would also look after the periodic condition inspections of the aircraft. And that's where we will go to see the aircraft, inspect the records, or we will ask a company like Acumen to go and do that on our behalf. And that's where we go. We visit our aircraft. We have a look at the records. We will scan the records, make sure that we have copies of the records in our possession. But that really is just to protect the integrity of the aircraft. and make sure that the value is being retained in that asset. You know, we can't ever get away from the fact that these aircraft can be worked up to 150, 160 million dollars. So it's not, you know, it's not something that we that we want to be taking our eye off. We want to make sure that the aircraft's being kept as one piece. It's been kept in good condition and it's been kept operational. The other part of the technical asset management role that we would have would be asset surveillance, and it's a bit. It's a bit like the condition report, but it's just this constant monitoring of the airline. It's the constant monitoring of the utilisation of the aircraft.
We all know that aircraft sit on the ground from very for various times. So during a maintenance check or, you know, every now and again, you will see patterns where airlines might rest an aircraft or not use an aircraft. But when you see something unusual in the utilisation of the aircraft, that's usually a warning sign for us that something is not right. And that's something could be the airline might be in financial trouble. They may not be able to afford to buy a part. The aircraft might have had an event and we need to investigate it further. So really, to us, that's the technical asset management role of aircraft leasing. It can be a little bit further, as I said, so it can be sort of like a contract management role as well, technical asset management in other leasing companies.
Then, I guess the technical asset management just takes in all of the technical part of the aircraft leasing. And all of the technical part would be sort of my role at the moment. So my role at the moment being the head of technical, I manage a team of over 50 engineers and technical professionals. And we really look after our aircraft from the time that they're just aligned on a purchase agreement with Airbus or with Boeing. We take that aircraft, that sort of obligation to take delivery of an aircraft. We have to work with an airline and the OEM. We have to build that aircraft for the airline.
We have to then deliver that aircraft to the airline. We manage the aircraft when it's on lease through our technical asset management function. But also, the technical team are the team that really move the aircraft from airline to airline. So when the lease expires with one aircraft, you're moving it to the next one, you could be changing the spec of the aircraft, changing the interior, changing some avionic mods, repainting the aircraft, moving it from one jurisdiction to another. And then also you're dealing with the end of life of that asset. So when it comes to the time to take that asset off of your books, how do you do it? Do you do it through trading? At which point the technical team have to support the trading activity. It could be through part out or it could be through something like what we've got into recently, which is passenger freighter conversions as well. So technical asset management can be all of that or it can be a part of that. In Avolon, it just happens to be part of the wider technical function.
Alok: So when you say it's part of the wider technical function, it drives me, I can't help but think about something. What I came across over a decade back was, and this was, I'm talking about pre-Avolon era really, there were leasing companies I interacted with. Maybe I can name one of them who's not around anymore, ILFC for example. Since they're not there, I hope I'm safe to name them. So
Enda Swan: We'll see, we'll find out.
Alok: We'll find out when this episode is published. And then there were other leasing companies, which I will not name. They had different ways of working, and especially it came to technical. So one thing you have touched upon is how you carry out regular inspections of the assets. You run an inspection program. But I very categorically remember ILFC had no such program. And the reason I remember is, having met the people who were running the show there, their thinking was complete hands-off, quite enjoyment, clause of lease agreement, they're not touching the asset, something goes wrong, then we will go in and do what we need to do. And obviously, they were a very big leasing company, 1000 plus airplanes when they were sold finally or acquired. And then there was another set of lessors we came across who were very proactive, annual, two-year. What, in your opinion, works better and why?
Enda Swan: I guess, so fundamentally, the requirements to periodically inspect your aircraft and to know what the condition of the aircraft is, is probably going to come from the funding of your company and how your company is set up. So, for example, if you're an aircraft leasing company that's set up through a bank, you know, so like, for example, Avolon took over C&T. number of years ago. So CIT had a very successful and a very large aircraft leasing company that we all knew very well. And they probably didn't spend as much time inspecting aircraft that were on lease. The same thing, it was quite enjoyment to let the operator use the aircraft per the lease. And at the back end of a lease, you're always protected by the return conditions that you have on your lease anyway.
So you should be able to, if the airline survives and if the aircraft goes through its natural lease term, you should be able to predict what you're going to get back in any event and what way the aircraft is going to be, what way the records are going to be. But if you're a company then that's actually, you're privately funded or it's money that you're taking on loan from a bank and that bank actually wants to wants to know what the condition of their assets is that they want to know what it's going to be looking like more regularly. So you have to do those periodic inspections. To me, for me, I think the right answer is really it's down to the it's down to your risk assessment of the airline. So again, you know, if you're if you have your aircraft on you're not so worried about the condition of that aircraft. You know, if you're if you have your aircraft on lease to an airline that has two or 300 airlines, it's a flag carrier. It's always going to be in place. All the aircraft are kept well. They're always in the media. Everybody flies with them. You know, you're pretty sure that your aircraft is going to be kept in good condition. Whereas if you if your aircraft is one aircraft of a fleet of four flying for a smaller airline. in a riskier country or a riskier jurisdiction, then you're going to want to inspect that aircraft a little bit more regularly. Because I think the chances of you maybe having to step in at some point to take that aircraft back earlier than the end of the lease term is much higher. So you're always going to want to know to some extent what your next move is going to be or to be able to quantify. Nearly always be able to quantify what your next move is going to be with that asset.
Alok: Then that obviously plays a role into the cost aspect of it. I think, as you rightly said, it is a credit worthiness of the airline, really the risk assessment which drives that requirement. And so in my mind, I'm still not sure why somebody like ILFC would never inspect, but even if it is bank's money, but I see your point, what you're saying from their perspective. Maybe that made sense for them. Maybe they were placing them in their mind in all A credit airlines. And so, moving on from that subject on the whole technical asset management, obviously in what you do, one of the key functions is managing the budget or how the allotted money is spent by the department. And this is possibly close to our hearts, both of our hearts from our previous backgrounds. So when I was in an airline and I was running the line maintenance and all, I was always at odds in getting budgetary approvals because engineering is considered a cost center when you're in the airline at least. At least the time I remember I'm sure it's the same pretty much right now. How is it for a typical leasing company? I'm not asking about Avolon by the way but a typical leasing company in your opinion. How does it consider it? Because what you have said falls in between, right? It could make money for the leasing company too, in some ways.
Enda Swan: As my finance colleagues always remind me, we're very good at spending money in the technical team here in Avolon. But look, aircraft maintenance is expensive, and aircraft are expensive to maintain. So it's just one of the functions of owning aircraft, I guess. But you're right, if you're an engineering team, a technical team in an airline, you are a cost center. So you're a part of the company that can make money. So if you think back to the example I gave you about Thomas Cook, for example, where Lucas and Ian and Manchester Airport, that was a prime example. It was a hanger where Thomas Cook airlines would contract Thomas Cook maintenance to do maintenance for them. And in return, Thomas Cook maintenance would recharge that maintenance back to the airline again and make money to pay the engineers, pay the facility, to pay whatever bills they had.
We don't work like that in leasing companies for sure. In leasing companies, I think technical, the technical team are more of a service provider to the other teams in the in the in the leasing company, and that's the way we see ourselves as the technical team in Avolon for sure. So What we do is we just provide a service for the other teams that are in the company here. To give you some examples, so the marketing team, we would be a big, we provide a lot of services to our marketing team. We're always providing them with the specs of our aircraft, advise them on the configuration of our aircraft, what spec changes can be made to the aircraft, what maintenance has been accomplished on the aircraft, what maintenance needs to be done on the aircraft. what needs to be done to transition an aircraft from one airline to another, to transition an aircraft from a jurisdiction to another.
So these are all questions that our marketing team would be asked by an airline when they sit in front of them trying to market an aircraft to them. And these are all answers that we would provide to our marketing team, arm our marketing team so that they're able to answer those questions to the airlines. Other teams that we would be provide a big service to would be, let's say, for example, our risk team. So we touched on the surveillance of aircraft just a few seconds, a few minutes ago. And the surveillance of aircraft is very important for our risk team to know. You know, so they're reviewing the airlines all the time to see what airlines are, should we be worried about what airlines? Should we place more aircraft with, what airlines should we place less aircraft with? And the way that we would be providing a service to them is that we're always telling them the condition of our aircraft, if maintenance events are being done, if they're being done correctly, what service providers are they using, what service providers are accomplishing the maintenance for them, are the aircraft being kept operational, but very important, can we move aircraft all the time? So You know, we have to be able to, at any point, be able to say to our risk team that, yeah, our aircraft are flying with airline X, but you know something, we feel confident that if we had to go in there tomorrow or next week, that we would be in some way able to repossess those airplanes or take those airplanes back, because that forms a vital part of the decision making tree that the risk team would have to get to. The finance team, so our finance team, so as I said earlier, we do like spending a lot of money in the technical team.
And I can tell you that no more so than building new airplanes, because when you build new airplanes, you're spending huge amounts of money well before the aircraft is even delivered from Airbus or Boeing. So when we build an aircraft, let's say we're building a Boeing 787, you're actually committing to spend money on that aircraft for... maybe 24 months before the aircraft arrives into your possession. You're speccing the aircraft with Airbus or Boeing. And it's our obligation to buy the furniture that goes on to that aircraft. So the furniture, the buyer furnished equipment, we call it BFE. And BFE for an aircraft is very, I mean, for a 787, typically 10, 12, 14 million, depending on the spec of the airline. So it's very expensive. But What it means is that we have to be able to show our finance team what the movement of money is going to be in the next number of years so that they can plan for being able to fund the business adequately. It's the same thing with transition budgets. So when removing aircraft from airline to airline, it's also to put the transition budgets together. And the transition budget would include changing any spec items on the aircraft. You're changing the spec from airline A into airline B spec because they'll have a different operating requirement. You'll have to paint the aircraft, you'll have to pay reps to be on site, you'll have to pay for flights and hotels and aviation authority certificates and licenses. So the budget to move an aircraft from one airline to another is quite large as well. And then really, I guess the other team would be the legal team. So we do spend a lot of time working with our legal team and they'd be a big customer of ours to, you know, to help them negotiate LOIs, negotiate leases, make sure that all of the proper technical covenants and aspects are contained in the, in the lease agreement. But also if a dispute comes up with an airline, we want, we are the ones who the legal team would come to, to get some technical expertise to make sure that our side of the argument is correct and we're pursuing that argument in the right direction. So I see us more of a service provider to the other teams in the Avolon team rather than a cost center.
Alok: I think the next thing which I wanted to ask is you have mentioned, very nicely explaining your career path, how you heard about Avolon, this great new leasing company starting at that time, right, 2010. And obviously, you worked hard through the ranks. What I want to understand is, in your opinion, from where you are and how you have shaped your career in Avolon, what do you think makes Avolon special? What is, you know, it's a new leasing company, right, in comparison
Enda Swan: Is it?
Alok: to many other legacy
Enda Swan: Yeah.
Alok: lessors. So it would be great to know that.
Enda Swan: It's a fascinating question because to me, it's a fascinating company. So I said to you earlier, I joined Avolon in October 2014. To me, it feels like I'm still a new person in the company. I still feel like I'm new every nearly every week. I get that feeling that I'm a new person here. And I guess that's just because I'm learning something new every day in this company. It's definitely the most enjoyable company I've ever worked in. It's a fantastic company. And we were just talking at lunchtime about it, about, you know, people who've left the company and the amount of times that we get approached by people who've left the company to see is there is there an avenue back into Avolon again? Because I think once people leave, they realize that was a good place to be. It certainly is.
For me, I think you have to break it down into three different areas, three prime areas for Avolon. So firstly, it's the people. The people here are just phenomenal people. It's a phenomenal ex-co that we have here at the moment, phenomenal leadership team, right the way down to the people working on the first floor here. It's a fantastic place. We've over 200 people here, multinational, multi-professionals. We enjoy doing what we do in here every day. We spend a lot of time working with the community on care initiatives. We spend a lot of time at company events, social events. We organise a lot of initiatives and programmes for our people as well to help them develop. So a good one would be that. Once a year Avolon has a week in, it used to be in September, it was May this year, where we would bring everyone from the company back to Dublin for a week and we would have an off-site week. And the off-site week always culminated in a one-day off-site day, which was just a big, big party and it was great fun. This year, but other years it was a week of sort of team building and dinners and just catching up with your colleagues. This year our HR team developed a new, it was a new program called Evolve and it was a fantastic program. It was on the back of an aviation school that we ran earlier in the week. In the aviation school, we brought people from rising sort of rising talent from a hundred airlines and banks from across the industry to Dublin to give them a run through aircraft leasing, Avolon and aircraft leasing to sort of educate them into how aircraft leasing works.
And it's always a great event. It's a two day event. After that, then we had our Avolon Evolve event and that really was, it allowed everybody in the company to sort of step back from their day to day and to come together and to reflect and to challenge ourselves to help us develop really as individuals and teams. And that's what Avolon is always about. It's always about making ourselves better. But we have a famous saying in Avolon that is, we're very proud of what we do, but we make sure that we have a lot of fun doing it. And that's really important to us here in Avolon. The second thing I think is that the corporate values, the corporate values that Avolon have, and Avolon's corporate values, they're embodied in the acronym TRIUMPH, which stands for T for transparency, R for respect, I for insightfulness, B for bravery, and E for ebullience. And those values are really the basis of how we run our businesses and it's how we interact with each other and how we interact with all of our stakeholders and it really defines who we are and what unites us as a company. So it's so our tribe values are hugely important to Avolon And I think lastly for me as a with a technical background like yourself, I mean, you know My job my role would be nothing if I didn't have an involvement with aircraft For me, so it's the platform as well. And the fact that we have such a diverse fleet of aircraft here. So we have over 10 different aircraft types in our fleet. We have over 160 different airline customers across 50 different countries. We have a very young fleet. So I think the average age of our fleet at the moment is about 6.8, 6.9 years old. And even though our fleet is very young. What we do with that fleet, the range of tasks and the range of work that we do every day with that fleet is really diverse. So we're building new aircraft, we're moving old aircraft, we're parting out aircraft, consignment, we're converting aircraft into freighters. So there's always something new in this company. As I said, you're learning every day. We absolutely, we never sit still in this company, but we have a lot of fun doing what we do every day.
Alok: You mentioned six and a half, 6.9 years average age. That's amazing because if I may say so, that's even after you have acquired the CIT fleet a few years back. Right?
Enda Swan: Yep.
Alok: Because CIT fleet was traditionally on the older age side, I believe. And so Avolon has done very well in merging that fleet in, or maybe I believe trading out or parting out some of the older fleet also, which is great. And If I may ask, what is the total fleet size right now under management?
Enda Swan: So we have just under 600 aircraft in service and just under 900 aircraft between in service and on order. So something like 270, 280 aircraft on order. And that’s across everything from 320s to 737 Max. We recently announced a top-up of our 737 Max order for another 40 aircraft. So that was an exciting moment. And it really demonstrates our demonstrates how involved we are with Boeing and how involved we are with the MAX program.
Alok: So you have given me the cue to move to my next topic then from Max.
Enda Swan: I'm getting myself in trouble here.
Alok: New technology, we're talking new technology. Max is new technology. We know what happened with Max. Max is a very successful aircraft now, obviously, at this time. But engines, we are now dealing in a new world. We have new technology engines. And you being the man who is managing the technical affairs, and given your background, maybe tell me a little bit about what are the trends you're seeing in new engine technologies. How do you see those challenges and how do you see as an asset manager managing those going forward?
Enda Swan: Yeah, again, it's a good question. So I should have added that when I took on the role of head of technical back in October last year, I also took on the relationship management for all of our engine OEMs as well. So I am the point of contact in Avolon for Rolls-Royce CFM, GE, Pratt & Whitney. So I should be able to give you a very good answer here. But I don't want to fool you.
Alok: I would love to be a fly flying on the wall. Let's stick to one of those meetings.
Enda Swan: I don't want to mislead you. I'm not an engine expert. I can guarantee you that. So we have a team of five people in a power plant team down on the third floor here, engine experts. And each one of those guys would have more engine knowledge in their little toad than I would have in my whole body. But I'll give you as much knowledge as I have about the subject. Yeah, so look, we're very we're obviously very committed to new technology, to new technology aircraft. And you can see that through our purchase agreements and through our purchase agreements for new aircraft, we're obviously committed to new technology engines as well. And it's really, you know, it really shows displays the goal of Avolon to be able to equip all of our airline customers and the industry with the newest technology aircraft and engines that there is available. The new technology engines fantastic engines and I think we can see it through the fuel burn savings on all of those engines. You know, they are all double digit fuel burn savings compared to the last generation of engines. So are they doing what they were designed to do? They absolutely are and probably a little bit more with some of the engines. You know, some of these engines I think are probably performing a little bit better with fuel savings than anticipated.
Some of them are maybe not there, but they're not far off it either. All of them have huge savings compared to the last generation of engines. But to be able to produce those fuel savings, the engine has to be more efficient. For the engine to be more efficient, the engine has to run at a much higher temperature in its core. And what's that done a lot is that has really, it really means that all of the new technology engines now they're really all still trying to find their feet in the industry. Because if you think that NEO aircraft came into service in maybe 2016, 2017, around that time, the same thing with Maxis and Trent 7000s on A330 NEOs came in 2018, 2019, GenXs on 787s. They're all new technology. They're all trying to find their feet at the moment. And definitely as we travel around and we listen to our airline customers, a very prevalent complaint from all of the airline customers is that new technology engines are, you know, they're not meeting engine reliability numbers that we saw on the previous technology engines. The time on wing is not there. There is huge shop visit constraints at the moment, supply chain issues, trying to get engines through shops and new engines are just not meeting the ultimate life that they were designed or that the design criteria that was set by the airframe OEMs, the engine OEMs are not reaching that.
They're nowhere near reaching that on some of these engines. So that is a complaint from all of the airlines and of course, asset owners as well. And all of these things come together to, at the end of the day, all of these things come together to cost the airline more money. Because if you don't have reliability in your engine and if you don't have... durability in your engine, that means your engine is off wing more. And if your engine is off wing more, it's in the shop more. And it just so happens that at the moment, you have particular engine types that your engine comes off wing and it's going into a queue for two or three months to get into an engine shop visit. And then once it goes into the engine shop visit, it can be in there for six months. And then we've supply chain issues, which is slowing it down even further. And when you add it all together, there's some of these new technology engines, they're coming off wing early, way too early, and then they're not available to go back on wing for eight, nine, 10 months. And for all that time, your airline customer, if I'm an airline, I'm paying for a spare engine, I'm paying for all other types of support to be able to keep my aircraft flying.
So all of these issues are all coming together to cost the airlines and cost the asset managers much more money to operate aircraft. There is no doubt that a lot of that cost is being offset by fuel savings. But I think that's where the big problem is at the moment. And until the engine manufacturers can, number one, they have to really fix the engine shop visit sort of clog that we have at the moment. And then after that, then hopefully progress the engine through time so that the engine gets more robust, higher durability, it gets to stay on wing longer, so that the airlines can get to enjoy more on disrupted operation of their aircraft. I think. To sort of further on your question, if you were to think of the current technology engines, I think a few years ago, the thought was always that there was probably going to be one more squeeze in current, in sort of the internal combustion engine technology, and that there would be one more step with these engines. But I think what we've seen in the last few years, I think the engine OEMs, airlines, and everybody involved is probably looking at it now and going, you know something, everybody? We've pushed these engines far enough and we should stop now. And now is the time to actually start thinking of something completely new. So something completely new is always on our radar. We don't know what it's going to be yet. I don't think anybody really does, but look, we're tremendously excited about new technologies like open rotor technology, which CFM and Airbus are testing at the moment. But realistically, any new engine technology is going to require a new clean slate aircraft to be installed on. And we don't see a new clean slate aircraft being introduced anytime before the end of this decade for sure.
Alok: I think you have given the pro and con both of the new technology engine and you also mentioned that in your opinion or what you see is the fuel savings are kind of to certain extent offsetting the current problems. But am I right or am I wrong in rather saying that the fuel savings were promised when these engines were let us say sold at a certain price point right there was certain fuel savings which were part of the package and the reliability bit was also part of that package so is it that they are delivering more fuel more fuel savings much more than what was promised and in that effect then offsetting the challenges which are happening or is it delivering the fuel savings, which is great, but to the extent which was promised or nearby but still having these reliability problems. I think you got the gist of what I'm trying to ask here.
Enda Swan: Yeah. It’s definitely the latter. They are achieving their fuel-borne targets, but how far they've pushed the engine to achieve those targets means that the engine is just not as durable on wing as what the previous technology engine was. So I don't have the figures off the top of my head, but I definitely remember redelivering 737-800 aircraft that had first-run engines that were hitting 30,000 flight hours before a shop visit.
Alok: Yep.
Enda Swan: Current technology or the new technology, LEAP engines, Pratt & Whitney GTF engines, they are absolutely not reaching that. I think if they're reaching even 15, 16, 20,000 hours, I think you're going to be very lucky. So the durability of the engine on wing is not there. The cost of shop visits has probably gone up. Definitely the amount of, the length of time you're spending in the shop has gone up and the ultimate life of the definitely LLP. So LLP ultimate life. So an LLP is designed to have a life or it's removed after 15,000 cycles or 20,000 cycles or 25,000 cycles. And all those cycle limits were very well established on the older technology engines. At the moment, they're just they're a target for new technology engines. And we have a lot of engines, especially the wide body engines, where the ultimate life is nowhere near what was promised when the aircraft was being designed or being sold.
Alok: Yeah, and that then adds an additional layer of complexity in the already complex technical asset management, or I would say your engine management team, right? Which is, I mean, it's very interesting by itself.
Enda Swan: Yep. Absolutely.
Alok: So, yeah, so this is going in a very nice sequence, by the way. So you mentioned new technologies, you mentioned the open rotor technology and all. And also as a matter of fact, Avolon, is a partner in a new generation, I think, vertical lift technology. I think vertical is the name of the company, if I'm not wrong, right?
Enda Swan: Vertical correct, yeah.
Alok: Yeah, so, and which is developing a totally different thing. It's a kind of a drone-based technology, if I may say so, right? And so that and this Open Rotor also has an impact on the ESG initiatives, you know, not necessarily going on to the company level, but I think on a departmental level and the areas which you look after. Would you care to just maybe list out a few how ESG initiatives play a role in this area of your business?
Enda Swan: Yeah, I think it's very hard to break it down to a department level for a company like Avolon because I think you can't forget that, so Avolon are not the end user of our product or our asset. So it's somebody else that's using it. So it can be a little bit tricky for Avolon to try and improve our ESG rating or environmental rating. I think It's probably a case that, you know, the answer that I'm going to give you is probably going to be more of a company, a holistic company. I can definitely delve into a few areas where our team and our department are working on some initiatives. So if you think about it, one of them would be at the moment, we're reconfiguring three seven eight seven aircraft for moving them from one airline to another. And we have we're running a case study on those three aircraft at the moment. They're being they're being reconfigured in the Middle East for a Latin American airline by an asset manager that's based in Dublin.
So, if you put all that together, that's a lot of air miles between the various different stakeholders in the project. But what we're trying to do is we're working on a case study to see. how can we deal with the material that we take off those aircraft in an environmentally friendly way and in a way that sort of how can we deal with them at source so that they come off the aircraft in a location, we deal with them in that location and we're not causing we're not causing excess movement of those parts around the globe to different storage facilities. So maybe years ago, you would take off a set of seats in the Middle East and you would send them back to Dublin to be stored in Dublin or in Shannon or someplace. What we're trying to do at the moment is to deal with all of that equipment at the aircraft so that we're leaving that MRO facility not with a container full of seats or not with a container full of old parts. And we're dealing with those parts in various different ways. So we could be selling those parts to somebody, but we're selling them at that point. We're not moving them for somebody. Or we could be just donating them to some sort of to some companies who in turn are donating them to companies based in like, I think one of the companies that we're donating to is based in Kenya.
And this company in Kenya actually bring all of these, they're all the composite material, so sidewalls and bins and bin doors and things like that. And they can break them down and turn them into sort of slates that can be used on housing in the locality. So, really good stories at the end of the day. But we're trying to deal with all of our equipment at source so that we're saving ourselves from having to ship parts halfway around the world just to put them in storage for two or three years before we decide to recycle them or to scrap them. So if you think about it, like that's one area that our team is working on. We also just recently, actually just this week, it was announced that there is an association called AFRA. It's called the Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association. And they had an AGM this week in Orlando, actually. And at that AGM, Boeing, in conjunction with Avolon pledged to use only AFRA associated recycling facilities to recycle any aircraft. What that means is that basically any time that we have an end of life asset and we have to consign it, we have to part it out, we have to scrap it, we're only doing that in facilities that have met all the different protocols of the of AFRA, of the Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association. And by doing that, you know, we hope to raise the awareness a little bit that there are such associations out there and there are. It's a shame to have to recycle some of these materials sometimes. And definitely in aviation, you know, we do recycle a lot of material, especially a lot of interior material. But there are ways to do it in an environmentally friendlier way than just not thinking about it at all.
Alok: If I may just share something, you may be knowing this. So the older airplanes, the older technology airplanes, which are all metal, unlike the new generation, I had come across a company in North India, where I am right now, in the North part of India, where they were exclusively in the business of automobile recycling. And they were owned by a big Japanese group and we were talking with them about opportunity to do recycling of airplanes. But you know what came out in the study, these guys are like metal experts. You tell them metal, you tell them aluminium alloy type, they know what to do with it. And we shared with them the data on alloys of skin sheets, sheet metal of airplanes. And guess what? There was no end use available for those aluminium alloys of airplane sheet metal. And we figured, finally, we went to different companies to do this study. And we found out that all that metal has to be just dumped in a scrap yard. It can't be reused because of the certain grade of aluminium alloy which was used. So you're right. It's a challenge. And it's great to know what Avolon as a company is doing in that direction to manage that better from an environmental friendly way.
Enda Swan: Yeah, and like, you know, we do feel that, certainly from my perspective, when I talk to a lot of part suppliers, a lot of interior, so, you know, seat manufacturers or galley manufacturers or... I think all those companies together with the big OEMs, Airbus and Boeing, they need to come together and figure out a way to actually be able to recycle parts in unison together. So it's OK for a manufacturer A to recycle a manufacturer A's seats in accordance with their procedure, but they won't recycle manufacturers B seats. I'm not talking about Airbus and Boeing here, I'm talking about seat manufacturers.
But you know, and that's wrong, you know, because it's the same material in all these seats. And at the end of the day, it's, you know, recycling seats, for example, it's all material that can be used again. But certainly, you know, certainly there's a lot to be done. And I I really do feel that all of the manufacturers, and I think it has to be driven by Airbus and Boeing because they're the ones that really qualify the suppliers and they qualify the parts suppliers for their aircraft. And they need to be the ones, I think, driving the initiatives to get all those people talking together to be able to come up with proper ways to recycle material and only use material that is recyclable.
Alok: Let’s go to another topic of, again, something you mentioned when you were talking about Avolon fleet. P2F, passenger to freighter conversions. There were some announcements in the last few months, opportunities in the P2F space. I think Avolon has also been involved in that. The market was thought to be there with a boom, especially with the pandemic situation where everybody was buying everything online and a lot of new freight orders have been placed. In fact, I think a few months back there were just no slots available, I believe, for P2F conversions anymore. And I believe as an asset manager, as a lessor, Avolon is also involved in the industry on P2F and they see opportunities there. So, you know, from your point of view, what do you see as the challenges and opportunities ahead on the P2F market?
Enda Swan: Yeah, it's actually very exciting at the moment. So I'll give you a little bit of background about how Avolon got involved in it. So back in 2021, we launched our A330-300 P2F program. And we launched that in conjunction with IAI industries in Tel Aviv. And anyone familiar with the industry will know that IAI are one of the most renowned freighter STC developers and conversion houses in the world. Huge heritage with 747, 767, 737 conversions. And really, at the time, this was 2021, we're in the middle of COVID, we're in the middle of when we had probably the most AOG aircraft that we've ever had or we ever want to see. And we had to look at ways of dealing with as many of those aircraft in different ways as possible. So for Avolon, being one of the largest, or if not the largest, owner of A330 aircraft in the industry, the big problem for us to fix was A330s. So A330CO aircraft, Avolon own over 50 of them. If you include NEO aircraft on that as well, between delivered orders and aircraft that are due to deliver to airlines. I think we've another 50 aircraft. So we've well over 100 A330 aircraft. And we were starting to see a lot of A330 aircraft, especially the CEO aircraft, being grounded during the pandemic.
So we wanted to look at a way of trying to deal with those in an alternate way, because once they go into storage, they're very expensive aircraft to put back into service again. And if you add in, you know, if you add in... reconfiguration or some sort of mod work on those aircraft, they really become a struggle to be able to put those aircraft back into service with an airline on low rent and to be able to make sense of a deal to make money on it. So the freighter market was something that we looked at. IAI came to us and they said that they were thinking of launching a product and we jumped at the opportunity to be able to work with them. We do know that EFW, who are the partnership between EFW, obviously Airbus and STAero have already had their STC and they had that from before the Covid pandemic. They're probably after converting close to 30 aircraft at this stage, A330 aircraft. But when we looked at the when we looked at the 330 market. So this is really the sort of mid wide-body market, which is really dominated by the 767 at the moment. And the 767 feedstock is just naturally going to dry up in 2026, 2027.
So the prediction for mid wide-body freighter aircraft is that between now and 2030, that another 500 aircraft will be needed to enter into the fleet, the worldwide fleet. If you take then the 76s drying up, that means that probably 200s, 250, 300 A330s, there's a possible possibility that amount of A330s will be converted. So, also it was a no-brainer being such a large owner of A330s to get into that market. So, you're right that the next available slots for A330s at the moment would be 2027, I think, EFW, 2028 for IAI. But, the challenges, getting back to what you asked, definitely the challenges on the freighter side at the moment. I guess number one, it's like all sort of all the challenges that we see in the technical world. It's just bringing it back to the technical world again. I look at its supply chain and the amount of slots that there is out there at the moment, the amount of conversion slots and will the conversion houses be able to maintain the staff, maintain the supply chain issues for materials to be able to convert all those aircraft and we are seeing it already that not with IAI because thankfully IAI are not converting a 330 yet, they're only developing the SDC. But definitely EFW, there are some delays with the EFW program at the moment and it's all down to just supply chain and the fact that, during the pandemic, people were left off and now trying to ramp back up to get back up to their target again. But other than that, obviously, you know, we have seen that the reason we got into the freighter market was because of the amount of AOG aircraft. That sort of heightened our interest in it.
What could we do with AOG aircraft? We're now approaching that time where AOG aircraft is, you know, the AOG fleet is getting very low again. So we're probably somewhere between five and ten percent AOG of what we were at the at the maximum during the pandemic now, which is great news for Avolon. And the even better news for Avolon and less are things that airlines just cannot get enough aircraft at the moment. And airlines can't get enough aircraft at the moment is because of delays with production of aircraft. And then the with engine issues, other engine other aircraft going AOG, so they need more aircraft in their fleet. But the more aircraft that go back into service, that means that there's more belly capacity to carry freight around on. So definitely the big challenge for the freighter market going forward is that you have this surge of freighter slots that have been sold in the last number of years and the market was very buoyant. It was going up at an unprecedented rate and now market is starting to come back down again because there is that belly, there is the belly capacity.
But, you know, luckily for us Avolon, just speaking for Avolon now, with the mid wide-body freighter market that we're after jumping into with the A330s, like that's sort of known as the express market and it's the express in that it's e-commerce, it's Amazon, it's large volume over short sort of sectors. And that fleet is actually growing at about six percent per annum at the moment. We do know traffic cargo traffic, I think, is predicted to grow at three percent over the next 20 years. So there are a lot of positives there. There's a lot of tailwinds. We do feel that we're in the right market with the freighter, with our freighter side of the business. But there is certainly going to be some challenges for, I think, maybe the narrow body and possibly some of these big wide body STCs as well going forward.
Alok:
Right. You know, just for the sake of my audience, I just want to add a little context to what you have said. One is STC. You have used the word STC. And as I mentioned earlier, our audience has asked me to always define some of these terms. It's a supplementary type certificate, right? It's basically that's what STC stands for. And the topic of this podcast is not to explain what that is, but I'm sure our friends who are listening in can find that out. And I'll be happy to help. And also you have spoken about AOG. I just want to be, just want to explain a little context and please feel free to edit me wherever I go wrong. Aircraft on ground, but I think from a lessor point of view, an AOG basically would most often mean airplane which is not on lease,
Enda Swan: Exactly.
Alok: Right? And from an airline's point of view, it's a technical AOG where the airplane is grounded. Possibly technical or operational reasons, more often technical than operational. And that's I think a fine nuance between a lessor and an airline. I just learned this on the job myself. I didn't know this before.
Enda Swan: Absolutely. And I remember back in the pandemic, I was managing new aircraft at the time, obviously, but that was a work-stream to really dry it up. So I offered to my boss at the time to set up a team in our technical team called the AOG team to look after to look after all of the AOGs. Because don't forget, an aircraft leasing company is not set up to have a technical team to look after AOG aircraft. We're set up to have a technical team to put aircraft into airlines and then just monitor those aircraft as they fly and move them from one airline to another. Managing aircraft through a storage period was something that we just didn't have the manpower for. So we actually transformed our new aircraft team into an AOG team. And there was a lot of confusion in the industry. I'd ring up various different suppliers and try to explain this to them. And they were like, what do you mean? All your aircraft are grounded for what part do you need? And I was like,
Alok: Exactly.
Enda Swan: No, no. little bit different.
Alok: Exactly that is the reason I was explaining that. Because when I was in an airline job many years back, I was heading AOG team also for a few years.
Enda Swan: Yeah.
Alok: And our job was obviously to go to a station, recover an aircraft. And
Enda Swan: Yeah, there's always work in technical Alok. There's always work. It doesn't matter what you're living through. There's always some sort of work in technical.
Alok: Absolutely. OK. And that is a very well-recorded podcast, I must say. We have covered a lot of ground today. And at the very end, we have taken a lot of your time. Very thankful for that. One of my favourite questions to always ask is when I speak to someone like you is, what do you tell the young people out there, people joining in your company or working in your department or otherwise in the industry, what do you think is a good career advice for them to listen to from you?
Enda Swan: Yeah, that's so. So look, I think starting off, if like the start of this podcast, I spoke about working hard. So, you know, you cannot be afraid to roll up your sleeves and work hard. I wouldn't say that this industry has to be detrimental to your work life balance or anything like that. It's not like that. It's a very enjoyable industry to work in. But there are times when you really do have to roll up your sleeves and work hard. And certainly as you as you climb the ladder, it's good to get involved in something that you're uncomfortable doing, because that's where you really learn and develop yourself. And it's really where you where you'll push your boundaries to make sure you're always stretching yourself to learn something new. I would always say as well that, you know, don't try to overshoot too early.
And we see it a lot where. It's very easy to come into a leasing company and especially in the technical background and pick up a little piece of knowledge and become very good at doing something and just picking up little bits sort of through proximity from listening to other people and there's always a lot of there's always a lot of movement within the leasing companies, especially in the technical teams as well, movement of staff and movement of people. And it's very easy sometimes to sort of try and to always be looking and to see that the grass, you know, to think that the grass is always green or somewhere else. And I'm not saying that you should always just join a company and stick with them for the rest of your life. But, you know, sometimes it's better to just get into a company and take your time going through the relative steps. And it's something that we're trying to do in our technical team here in the last few months. We're trying to reshape our technical team so that we can bring in graduates and we can put them on a continuous development through the technical team. That they can come in as a sort of a junior asset manager and maybe every three years you sort of rotate into a new role where you learn a new skill, a new discipline, a new part of the business.
And ultimately in 12 years or 15 years, we'll turn you into one of the, a very experienced technical project manager, a person who's out there moving aircraft from airline to airline, negotiating visas at the real sharp end of the technical world. So I'd always say to pace yourself through your early years. Don't get yourself in too deep, too quickly. Pace yourself, learn off those around you. There's so much knowledge out there. Just always be like a sponge when you're around the more experienced people, because these people have been through so many tough times and so many different scenarios that they know how to deal with basically everything and every type of person that you come across. And other than that, like it is here in Avolon, you just have to have fun. You just have to have fun as you're going through your career. Enjoy life. Don’t. Work hard, but enjoy your life as well.
Alok: That's great advice. Thank you very much. And building on what you just said, one of the things we have tried to do in the area we work in, this is necessary for career growth, is cross-functional training, like training programs which you're running. For example, if there's somebody working in just data management, or he or she is interested to learn what maintenance reserves are. So there are training programs where people's skills can be developed. And in our company, like for example, we have seen people have been able to move roles thanks to those opportunities. So that really helps. You're absolutely right.
Enda Swan: It does, yeah. And we're trying to do that here at the moment as well. It's a sort of a buddy system. And it's a system where we give the younger people the opportunity to put their hand up and ask for another area. I want experience working with power plant or I want experience in new aircraft or asset management. And we sort of take all that together and we mix it up and we see where we can place people for four or five months just to give them a little bit of a flavour. And actually, it's surprising a lot because everybody assumes that everybody in the technical team wants to end up as a project manager moving aircraft from one place to another. And that's you know, there's no doubt about it. It is the direction of travel for the majority of people who come into a technical team. But we have seen with a few people and the experience for it for a few months and to go. It's not for me. I'd prefer to be in engineering or I'd prefer to be in power plant. It's just, you know, it's the uncertainty, I think, of, you know, you never really have control over an aircraft that's moving from airline to airline. You never know what tomorrow is going to bring, whereas if you work in a more controlled environment, you're always in control of what you're doing every day. So it's funny you see that when you give people a little bit of experience doing different roles. Sometimes they can change their opinion on what direction they want to go in.
Alok: Yeah, spot on, I agree. That was great. So we are at the end of this. It's taken a lot of your time again, as I mentioned. Thank you very much, Enda. Any last message you would like to give to the podcast listeners?
Enda Swan: Nothing really other than congratulations on this. I look it's a really it's a really I've listened to all of the podcasts that you've recorded so far and they're all fantastic and actually very educational as well in one or two of them, so I find them fascinating. But aside from the podcasts, you know, well done on your own career and what you've done, you know. So you've built a fantastic company, a company that Avolon used quite a lot. We have deep relationships, which is really well done.
Alok: Much appreciated. Thank you very much,Enda.