Bulgarian Aviation Group (BAG) and Germany’s Lufthansa Technik (LT) signed a contract establishing joint-venture for repairs and D-Check maintenance of Airbus 320 and Boeing 737 type passenger aircraft, investor.bg said on October 30.

LT would be the majority 80 per cent owner of the new venture, while BAG would hold the remaining 20 per cent, which corresponded to the two companies’ share of the total investment of 20 million euro.

The first repaired aircraft would come out of the joint-venture's repair facilities within a year. Meanwhile, BAG and LT would prepare the existing hangars at Sofia Airport, where jets would be repaired and maintained.
Negotiations on the creation of the joint-venture had been held over the past two years but their finalisation had become possible now, said Dimitar Pavlov, executive director of BAG. BAG was property of Bulgarian conglomerate Chimimport, and was the successor of Balkan Hemus Group, which in early 2007 won the privatisation tender for national flag carrier Bulgaria Air.

Pavolv said, as quoted by investor.bg, that the Bulgarian-German aircraft repair and maintenance facility was to be the first of such kind not only in Bulgaria but also in the Balkans. After its launch, the repair factory would be able to do a complete overhaul of 124 aircrafts annually. In general, such overhauls are done once in six or eight years and would take a month to complete, Pavlov said.

Lufthansa Technik was the third largest investor in Bulgaria among German companies, said German ambassador to Bulgaria Michael Geier, who was present at the signing ceremony alongside Transport Minister Petar Moutafchiev.