Managing aircraft maintenance for pilot training

Affinity Flying Services secured a £500m contract in February to provide the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) and its Ascent Flight Training partner with the aircraft for the fixed wing portion of the UK Military Flying Training System (UKMFTS) programme.

Affinity, an Elbit Systems and Kellogg Brown & Root joint venture, will replace legacy MOD fleets with 38 modern training aircraft as well as simulators and classroom learning for aircrew across the Royal Air Force, Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm and Army Air Corps. The contract includes the designing, delivering and managing of the fixed wing training service until 2033 and is expected to provide around 200 new jobs across training bases in the UK.

As part of this, IFS Applications 9 and the IFS Managed Cloud solution will provide Affinity with maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) and ERP software for the business as an end-to-end solution - supporting aircraft operations and maintenance, supply chain, HR and finance. Affinity will provide a fixed wing training aircraft and maintenance to support UK fixed wing military flying training to deliver an optimised training service and ensure availability of Grob G 120TP ‘Prefect’, Beechcraft ‘Texan’ T-6C and the Embraer ‘Phenom’ 100 training aircraft.

“Affinity plays a key part in the seamless progression of military personnel through fixed wing flying training and, with the help of IFS, will help support a more modern and efficient training pipeline for UK aircraft pilots,” Ian Chalmers, Managing Director at Affinity Flying Training Services said. “The IFS solution is a perfect fit for us as it provides an agile and responsive system to better ensure the maintenance and availability of our aircraft for the duration of our partnership with Ascent and the MOD, as well as supporting the running of our JV business.”

IFS aerospace and defence industry director Graham Grose said: “We are delighted to have been selected to be part of this important £500m MOD and Ascent Flight Training investment for fixed wing training. The solution provides Affinity with a powerful and easily deployed service to streamline the maintenance process of aircraft and to focus on training the future generation of military aircraft pilots. By using the solution, Affinity can maintain the aircraft and prepare future UK aircrew for duty, as well as making sure strict airworthiness and safety standards are met alongside the running of the business from day to day with traditional finance, HR and procurement.”