The ground-breaking deal will see Aeropeople establish a team of around 80 people based at Heathrow where they will work in partnership with interiors service provider Cabinair, part of the SA Group, to provide an end to end service for the airline across its Boeing 787 and Airbus A330/A350 aircraft.
Aeropeople Managing Director Ian Peart explains: “We are absolutely delighted to have secured such a prestigious contract with one of the world’s leading airlines. This is probably the biggest single deal that Aeropeople has ever won and is a great demonstration of our resilience during what has been a very challenging period for the sector.
“We have been providing recruitment services to Virgin for around 15 years and now look forward to extending that partnership in what is genuinely a ground-breaking deal that enables us to provide our customer with a turnkey solution that will minimise aircraft downtime whilst driving efficiency and value across all elements of the supply chain.
“I believe that it was Aeropeople’s ability, through our existing engineering expertise and aircraft approvals along with our collaboration with Cabinair, to provide Virgin with a one-stop-shop solution that differentiated our bid, making it a truly compelling and cost effective proposition at a time when everyone in our industry is looking for more from its suppliers.”
Phil Wardlaw, Virgin Atlantic Vice President Engineering & Maintenance commented: “Virgin Atlantic is very pleased to have contracted these services to Aeropeople. We have worked with them for many years and know they are a professional and trusted supplier. The Virgin Atlantic cabin experience is so important to us and our customers so it was essential that we partnered with a supplier that can help us maintain our world-leading cabin and onboard customer experience.”
Aeropeople will set up a Line Maintenance operation at Heathrow to support front line cabin interior maintenance as well as establishing a deeper scheduled maintenance and refurbishment operation in the Virgin hangar at the airport.
Recruitment for the new team is already underway with preparation and training taking place this week and, subject to any unplanned Covid-19 disruption, work beginning on the first aircraft week commencing January 11, 2021.