Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE) is most famous for its leasing arm, DAE Capital, but its majority ownership of Jordan-based MRO provider Joramco has started to make a bigger contribution as it compensates somewhat for falling lease revenues.

For the first three months of the year, revenues of DAE Engineering, which owns 80% of Joramco, increased by 11% year on year to $25.5 million.

For the same period, DAE Capital’s lease revenue fell almost 13% to $276 million as the lessor agreed to defer rents and restructure lease agreements to help its customers.

“Revenues for our customers have been disrupted in significant, unprecedented, and unforeseen ways as governmental authorities around the world put in place necessary isolation measures to contain the spread of COVID-19,” noted DAE.

As of March 31, 2021, the lessor owned 303 aircraft and managed 67 on behalf of third parties, and had deferral agreements in place with 19 customers – up from 17 at the start of the year. And since the start of the pandemic it had granted some form of relief to 38 airline customers.

Such actions have been widespread across the leasing community, while in the maintenance market DAE Engineering was bucking a trend by posting higher sales.

Joramco’s five aircraft hangars can cater for up to 15 wide- and narrowbody aircraft at a time and the MRO provider has type approvals for most of the major Boeing, Airbus and Embraer aircraft.

Although DAE did not reveal the cause of its improved maintenance result, at the end of last year it did note that it had added five new airline customers in 2020 and had begun 2021 with “a hangar full of aircraft”. 

“DAE believes that the strategic location, combined with a skilled and experienced 1,000 plus person workforce which gives it a man-hour capability exceeding one million per year, allows the Engineering division to offer a compelling value,” the Dubai state owned company noted after its recent earnings result.