BIG MOVES
AT MAREEBA Story and photos by Kerry Hastie
hangar where equipment was spread over many different rooms due to lack of size. Bigger dedicated avionics workshop greatly increases our ability to work on more and new varieties of avionics work. We now have a dedicated training room where we can produce our own training videos. This not only benefits Mareeba, but these training videos can be used all over MAFI maintenance bases worldwide.
F
or 40 years, MAF’s heavy maintenance facility that served the Asia/Pacific region was located in Ballarat, Victoria. It was moved to Mareeba in 2003 in order to be closer to field operations. At the time, this was thought of as a temporary measure. Now, after almost two decades, MAF Mareeba is relocating and rebuilding on the other side of the airport. Mareeba, in Far North Queensland, is ideally situated to serve the needs of Arnhem Land, Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste. It is equipped to provide major overhauls, repairs, modifications, repaints, avionics upgrades, stores support and more. The plan is to build with a view to the future, ensuring that there is room for expansion as MAF in Mareeba grows. This new base will set us up for decades to come, drastically improving our ability to service aircraft efficiently, train new engineers and lower our operating costs. The first hangar, which is designated
as our main maintenance hangar, was completed on schedule in December 2021. We spent the first two weeks of January shifting in our stores, engineering and office equipment and it was ready for work by the 20 January. Due to its increase in size and layout, it gives much greater ability to have more aircraft being worked on at once. We now have all the equipment used for aircraft maintenance housed in one area, as opposed to the old
The second hangar is due to be completed by the end of April 2022. This will house our new state of the art aircraft paint shop with additional office space upstairs—a major upgrade from what we had at our old hangar paint shop! We will now be able to paint aircraft like our Cessna 208s without having to remove the wings due to the size restrictions previously imposed on us at the old hangar. It will be much safer to work with extractor fans and air filtration, which provide a dedicated fresh air supply to the painters. There will also be a new office space upstairs allowing more administrative staff to be housed at Mareeba as well as providing
