Behind the scenes: See a major airline's tech and engine-test facilities
Korean Air, the largest airline in South Korea and the country’s flag carrier, is known among travelers for its award-winning commercial airline service and, in 2014, for a memorable “nut rage” tantrum.
The airline is also a major player in the aerospace and defense industry.
At its sprawling Tech Center in the port city of Busan, South Korea, Korean Air performs a wide variety of services for its own fleet and for many other airlines. In Incheon, Korean Air and aerospace manufacturer Pratt Whitney operate the world’s largest engine test facility as a joint venture.
Today in the Sky recently toured both sites.
Painting, maintenance and part production at Korean Air’s Tech Center in Busan
The Tech Center’s environmentally friendly paint hangar has repainted hundreds of aircraft for Korean Air and other airlines since it was established in 1998.
During our visit a Korean Air 777-200 was well into its nine-day repainting process. And on the team’s long "to do" list is a major contract inked with Qantas Airways to repaint four of its A380s between May 2019 and November 2020.
According to Korean Air, each A380 will take 15 days to repaint.
On our tour a Korean Air 747 cargo plane was parked inside a two-bay maintenance hangar undergoing an extremely thorough, required, multi-week inspection known as a D-check, during which all parts of the aircraft are evaluated.
According to Korean Air, this type of heavy maintenance is performed on more than 100 aircraft a year.
Inside other buildings at the Tech Center, parts are being manufactured for both Boeing and Airbus (we saw sharklets for the Airbus A320 in production) and hundreds of technicians are performing maintenance and repair for aircraft operated by many commercial airlines and for Korean and U.S. aircraft – including F-15 and F-16 fighters, CH-53 helicopters and a wide variety of other aircraft we were not permitted to photograph.
Engine Test Cell center in Incheon
In 2016, Korean Air and Pratt Whitney opened one of the world’s largest engine test facilities.
The $80 million Engine Test Cell (ETC) in Incheon is designed to test the world’s largest jet engines, with a maximum thrust of up to 150,000 pounds.
Currently the largest and most powerful commercial jet engine is on the Boeing 777 and has a thrust of 115,000 pounds, but Korean Air’s ETC is ready for the next generation of supersized engines, which are already in production.
“Prior to setting up this test cell, we had to send our engines elsewhere to be tested," said Bill Kim, manager of Korean Air’s Engine Test Cell facility.
That meant paying upwards of $8,000 to transport each engine overseas and waiting up to a month for an engine to get tested and returned.
“Here the turn-around time is far less: just two days,” said Kim, which means far less downtime and less need for Korean Air and other airline customers to purchase as many spare engines, which can cost up to $30 million dollars each.
Harriet Baskas is a Seattle-based airports and aviation writer and USA TODAY Travel's "At the Airport" columnist. She occasionally contributes to Ben Mutzabaugh's Today in the Sky blog. Follow her at twitter.com/hbaskas.