FIRST CLASS
Inside Al Ain’s state of the art aircraft parts factory
If you’ve flown on an Airbus A380 or Boeing 787 Dreamliner recently, there is a good chance some of the parts for that aircraft were made here in the UAE.
Amid rolling sand dunes in the deserts of Al Ain sits the 31,000-square-metre Strata Manufacturing plant.
From just one production line in 2010 there are now 11, with hundreds of workers delivering parts for the world’s most advanced passenger jets.
“A lot of people thought when we started that we were crazy,” says Ismail Abdulla, chief executive of Strata.
“What were we doing in the middle of the desert? This is impossible. You cannot manufacture these parts in such an area. But against all the challenges – we have.”
Strata has benefited from the huge deals that Emirates and Etihad have struck with aircraft manufacturers.
And rather than simply buying in expertise, it has ensured that Emiratis are trained and employed in engineering jobs, as the country diversifies its industries away from oil and gas. Airbus and Boeing. Flap track fairings for the Airbus A380, vertical fin ribs for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, and wing flaps for the A350 are some of the parts made here.
Strata will also make the complete vertical tail fin for the Dreamliner and parts for the 777X over the next few years.
Flap track fairings fit on the wings and improve efficiency, while ribs provide support in the tail fins. All parts are composite, meaning they are made mostly of carbon fibre.
This material is durable, light and makes for more energy-efficient planes. The 787, for example, was the first airframe composed primarily of composite materials and is about 20 per cent more efficient than jets of its size. Honeycomb pieces – made with paper – are also used to reinforce the composite.
To illustrate this, Mr Abdulla takes a piece, puts it on the ground and walks on it. The honeycomb is unscathed. “You can bend it, twist it,” he says.
The A380 super jumbo components are the largest parts that Strata makes. The rolls of carbon fibre are unfurled, precision cut using lasers and compacted, layer on top of layer in a mould. These are then cured in special tunnels, where the temperatures reach 250°C, to make them more sturdy. “There are different cooking recipes, as we call them,” says Mr Abdulla, who is in his 30s and has filled the chief executive role for a year.
After “cooking”, an ultrasonic inspection ensures there are no air traps or bubbles that could reduce the 25year life cycle of a part, while X-rays make sure all parts are seamless.
An A380 X-ray can take three hours and, if there is an issue it goes back to the rework area. Last year, Strata shipped more than 9,700 parts, or 642 ship sets. A ship set is one dedicated order for Airbus or Boeing. These sets are boxed, craned on to a truck, sent to Jebel Ali or Khalifa Port and then shipped by sea to Toulouse in France and Seattle in the US.
Strata has been successful in encouraging more locals into the aerospace field. Emiratis make up 51 per cent of the 700 workforce, and of these, 86 per cent are female.
The company offers secondments, and two pioneering Emirati female engineers recently returned from America where they worked on the Dreamliner. Strata has also established a research and development arm at Khalifa University to study 3D printing, built links with UAE University down the road and offers scholarship and intern programmes.
After the tour, we asked why Al Ain was chosen. Strata took a long view, Mr Abdulla says. The Garden City has good logistics links between Abu Dhabi and Dubai’s Al Maktoum airport and it is also part of a broader Nibras Al Ain Aerospace Park beside the airport. “Today, the airport is not being used much but [it should] in the future, so we took a long-term view.”
Mr Abdulla has been involved with Strata since the beginning and as a boy was interested in aviation. Born in Dubai, he lived close to the emirate’s airport and now recalls the early days of the Dubai airshow when he was seven or eight.
“From our home we would go to the roof and enjoy the show. I cannot deny my love for the majestic 747. It’s just one of the most beautiful planes ... there is something different about it.”
Today, Dubai has become the world’s busiest airport in terms of international passengers, and Abu Dhabi will open its huge Midfield Terminal in the next few years.
More people are flying, and expansion in markets such as China and India will accelerate this. Only last week, flight-tracking website FlightRadar24 confirmed it had tracked more than 200,000 flights in a single day for the first time. The world is going to need a lot more planes and the Strata partnership with Boeing and Airbus makes the UAE well placed to capitalise on this.
Before the interview closed, given the debate surrounding the future of Airbus’s A380, we asked Mr Abdulla for his take on the future of the superjumbo.
“I would put my vote with people who say the aircraft is before its time,” he says.
Mr Abdulla believes the double decker can prove its worth in increasingly crowded skies. “Use an A380 and you can transport two-and-a-half times the amount of people in just one slot. Hats off to that aircraft.”
For now, Strata has billions of dollars worth of contracts with Airbus and Boeing. It does not intend to make full airframes because shipping would be tricky, but Strata is looking at manufacturing engine components and even making its own carbon fibre.
“It’s amazing, today I walked into Strata for the 10,000th time and every day it’s something different. Abu Dhabi and the UAE mean business in the aerospace industry.”